I’ve been following this topic for a couple of days. Here are my observations:
I don’t use 80 metres much, mainly due to horrendous local noise. On Christmas Eve, I wanted to join a Santa Claus net and checked the tuning solution for my antenna (which is not very good for 80 metres) and it seems to have changed since I last set it up for the particular frequency. I tried a re-tune and could not get a very good match. I was rather surprised as I’d always heard and found that the KAT500 could match an iron bedstead. 😀 I decided to ignore the poor match, thinking it would be ‘good enough’, but on transmitting SSB at 100W, after a very short while, the tuner went into a Fault condition. A further attempt at matching (20W power) produced the same Fault result. I’ve not made further tests yet on 80m but 40m is as good as ever (1.2:1). I checked the firmware and although I thought I had the latest, it appears that I had not updated the utility and it reports v1.75v ask being up-to-date. I’ve downloaded the later utility, but not applied it yet, I now wonder whether to upgrade, or will I be opening a new can of worms? Should I try to get a better tuning solution with v1.75 first? Having started to install a Mac mini in the shack, I also downloaded (but not installed) the Mac version of the utility and I notice that there is about a two year difference between that and the Windows version. Are they the same utility, or should there be an updated version for Mac? 73, Alan - G4GNX > On 2 Jan 2022, at 17:46, Bart Campbell <ns4x.b...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I upgraded one of my KAT500 tuners to firmware version 2.05. I had already > upgraded the KAT500 utility to the current version, so no issues there. > After the upgrade, the KAT500 is unable to find a tuning solution on my 80 > meter dipole. My first thought was that there was an issue with the > dipole, but I checked it with an AA-230 antenna analyzer and there was no > change from previous measurements. I then switched the upgraded KAT500 > with another KAT500 that I have which was running firmware version 1.75. > It found a tuning solution on the dipole just fine, as has always been the > case with the first KAT500 prior to the firmware upgrade. So, I > "downgraded" the updated KAT500 to firmware version 1.75 and it once again > was able to easily find a tuning solution for the 80 meter dipole. It > seems that something in the tuning algorithm was changed in the latest > firmware that affects the tuner's ability to find a tuning solution on 80 > meters (I did not notice this issue on other bands after I updated the > firmware, but I concentrated my troubleshooting on the 80 meter dipole). > > Any ideas? I really want to use the latest firmware to take advantage of > the capability to accept transceiver TX frequency messages in Kenwood > format. > > Bart, NS4X ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
