As the original poster under this heading I figured you might be interested to know what I have achieved so far, even though I am not yet ready to send the white smoke up the chimney. Briefly, my problem was that my KAT500 would go into uncommanded tunes during a QSO, usually on digital modes.The practical result was that I had to restrict TX power to less than 40Watts on most bands to avoid a burst from the Chicago Piano in the KAT. I had assumed an antenna/feeder problem and had changed every last connector, wire, balun and insulator in my system before asking for help from the Reflector Brains Trust. All of the other people who subsequently reported a similar problem made me feel a little better, and I also received a lot of diagnoses and practical advice which I have followed or will follow soon. One of the simplest was from Ron WB4OOA: Carry out a K3 Gain Calibration via the K3 Utility (I had to download the latest Utility version to make this work properly) then Install the KAT500 V1.42 Beta (Not quite as easy as it sounds). After this things were better, and my power setting on the K3 always appeared on the KPA500 wattmeter. I could now operate at higher power on some bands but had to stay below 40W on 40m. I had also adjusted the per band retune trigger SWRs upwards via the KAT500 Utility which also helped a little.
I remain convinced though, that the basic trigger problem lies with the antenna system (an OCF multiband dipole) and I am continuing to work on this aspect using my analyser. Why it should have suddenly kicked off after many months of solid performance, and why changing everything hasn't yet cured it remains a mystery. My next steps are to try a choke balun on the feeder (parts now to hand) and to prune the antenna to get a better resonance on the bands of interest. Now if only this darn rain would stop! (I still think some tweaking of the KAT500 software might also help!) Ray Coles, C.Eng. M0XDL 10 Littlemoor Road, Weymouth DT3 6AA Tel: +44 (0) 1305 833699 Mob: 07831 516517 ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
