[BC] Assistance with a tall tower

[donroden at hiwaay.net]

1240Khz on a guyed 310 foot tall / two foot face triangular tower.

Any "guestimate" on the series feed R and j ?

It's an old install ..... doesn't look like the conventional "T"  
network for matching.... More like a "pi-net" with a shunt cap at the  
coax input to ground. There are two series caps at the antenna input (  
presumably to bring a high value of +j down to a usable level ? ) a  
series coil 7 turns 6 inches dia
and then a homemade self supporting #12 wire coil to another cap to  
ground at the junction of the "pi" coil and the two series antenna caps.

I can't read the values on the caps .... too weathered.

I can bridge the caps this weekend and measure the reactances, but any  
advance ball park ideas would be most helpful.

Is a T or a Pi the best network for a tall tower ?

Obviously, it's worked for maybe ten or more years .

Something ( capacitor / coax / insulator ) is breaking down and  
causing the transmitter swr circuit to foldback. then the fault will  
clear and return to normal ( normal ... HAHAH ) state until the next  
audio peak.

This is one of those "tar-babies" that I find myself in occasionally  
when I do something like getting the transmitter back to full power.

Don Roden