Refurbishing my dipole antenna damaged by monsoon rain!

My multi-band fan dipole antenna was not working after heavy rains. I was not able to get even local contacts on 40m, though the antenna was ‘tunable’ with auto-tuner in my FT-710 radio to 1:1 SWR. Brought down the antenna and unscrewed the PL259 connector in the 1:1 current balun and shorted the terminals using a pair of crocodile clips connected a short piece of wire.

Came to the shack and checked the DC resistance of the shorted cable using my digital multimeter. Got a value of around 30 ohms, which I thought is reasonable for 15m of RG 213 cable with PL 259 connectors at both ends, though I do not know the exact expected value. There was no continuity between the inner and outer conductors prior to shorting.

Spliced off about 2m of RG 213 cable with PL 259 connector at one end. In between I had dried the cable by hanging it under the sun shade for a few days to reduce moisture content inside. Now I presume that the main part of the cable which was damaged by water seepage has been removed.

Here are the antenna elements, one side dismantled to have only 40m elements and other side with all three elements for 40, 20 and 10m bands.

The electrical channel spacers which had been used to keep the three band elements separated were salvaged and kept for potential use in future antenna projects.

Wire antenna elements for 20 and 10m bands were also similarly salvaged and stored for future use.

Removed the protective outer sheath of the coax and exposed the shield, which appeared dark and oxide coated.

Scraped out the oxide coating to make the shield appear as shiny as possible.

Small segment of the dielectric covering the inner conductor was removed and the central conductor made shiny. It appeared to be made of multiple strands of copper clad aluminium.

Antenna elements for 40m alone were fixed on the cable and insulated. This time I am not using a 1:1 current balun at the feed point. Instead I am using a homebrew common mode choke at the radio end. That is because I am not sure whether the previous balun had been damaged by rain. I might add that at a later stage. As the previous spot of the fan dipole was taken by a folded dipole with ladder line, this forty meter antenna had to be mounted on the same mast at a much lower level. Apex of the antenna would be about 5m from the ground. I was happy to see that it had 1:1 SWR at the upper part of 40m amateur radio band without tuner. Lower part of the band needed the use of internal antenna tuner of FT-710 radio. I could have comfortable 40m contacts with the refurbished and simplified antenna mounted at a lower height.