Performance of my sturdy Körner 15.11 has degraded steadily and a few weeks back, at the start of the es season I noticed it became tough to tune in to a semi-local like WDR 4 from Aachen
on 93.9 MHz.
No RDS and often just noise and no signal at all. What a bummer during a great es opening!
Today the mast was lowered and the Körner inspected. The connection box with the coax balun and the coax lead to the main coax down cable was opened up and it was full of crud.
It was quickly cleaned. All the connections and solderings were still perfect. All connections inside the box are covered with resin making it impossible to disconnect the coax balun or the coax lead and replace them.
Unfortunately the coax from the box (about 50 cm) to the main coax had a problem: the braided shield was blacked by some moisture issues.
The Körner connection box was sealed with a few tiny bolds and some sealing kit.
Shortening the coax lead, replacing the old f-connectors with sealed RG6 F-coaxial compression connectors to the main coax and replacing the main coax with brand new bedea TELASS100B/100 coax was needed.
There was still some blackened shielding, but it had to be left the way it was.
The TELASS100B/100 has great specs!
The results were spectacular. WDR 4 on 93.9 from Aachen was back in full strength. Local Germans like 100.4 Radio Salue and 107.8 Radio AC popped up.
The fix and the shorter Körner coax with the blackened shielding were still working nicely.