On 5/19/2018 20:03, Ed Gray W0SD wrote:
ATU is great for stations with one antenna per band or less or even for more than one antenna such as for DXing. It does not do the job for contesting with multiple antenna's per band if they have some SWR. It is not a problem if the SWR is low then you can just use BYP Wayne says this will eventually be addressed via firmware. Until that happens I need to do some antenna work outside so I have low SWR for contesting with multiple antenna's per band. This is always better anyway. The ATU will retune on the "FLY" but to me does not seem useable for contest switching of antenna's, way to slow, if there are significant SWR differences. For me It will depend on the firmware fixes and how they are implemented. My solution will be to do some antenna work this summer.. I could get by with tube type amplifiers but with SS not so much!
This was my concern, as well, when first considering buying a solid state amp. (KPA-1500 is on the way.) I want a control input on the amp I can connect to the switch that selects antennas so the ATU will switch between at least two sets of settings for each band. As that didn't seem to be forthcoming, I built a tri-band tuner box, with 6 L networks and relays. That gets both my tribanders down to close to 1:1 on all bands, at least in the CW segments. It would still be nice if the ATU in the amp could follow the antenna selection.
BTW, I use a little toggle switch to select the tribander. I can switch it several times while a station is calling to determine which antenna is better. There's absolutely no way one could do that with a mouse. Maybe hot keys would work, but I like the idea that the station can function independently of the computer, even though I use one for contests.
73, Scott K9MA -- Scott K9MA [email protected] ______________________________________________________________ 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 Message delivered to [email protected]
