I may be having my first run-in with lightning damage. A thunderstorm rolled through the SF Bay Area last night. I didn't disconnect my antennas until I *saw* the first lightning flash.
Oops, I think. I turned on the radio later in the evening, and was getting very high SWR indications on the KAT100, and HiCur on the K2. Hitting TUNE caused a lot of clicking and clacking, and eventual tune to about 1.5:1, but SWR was still high on transmit - and the indicated power on the bargraph was lower than dialed in. This is on both antennas - a vertical and OCF dipole - both more or less resonant. I turned off the rig and called it a night. This morning I pulled out my LP200 dummy load/power meter. The ATU tunes it to 1.1:1. Power out does not change appreciably in response to the POWER knob - if set for any value less than 10W, the power is about 4W; if set for values about 10W (PA on), power out is always about 30W. In neither case is the LED indication on the K2 correct. I also notice that the SWR LEDs no longer display anything when the power is set below 10W, but indicate as expected when POWER is above 10W. If I put the ATU into CAL mode, which I understand removes all the LC network, the SWR LEDs indicate 5:1 (all on), and the power out is higher, but still doesn't respond to the POWER knob: 10W on LOW mode, about 90W in HIGH mode. Connected to the K2/KAT2 (with the serial cable disconnected) the K2 operates as expected (once I remember to turn the ATU back to AUTO :-) I'm not even sure where to begin looking, but it certainly seems that the SWR bridge might be malfunctioning. Help? Thanks! 73 de chris K6DBG _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
