The only antennas I have experience with are dipoles and commercial multi-band verticals. When I built my K1 I took the manual at its word and strung 30' of hookup wire around the room and shoved one end in the antenna socket and got 1.2:1 or better on all bands with the ATU. So I got ambitious yesterday and ran a 50' copper wire between a couple peaks on the roof, about 3' above the roof. One end is connected to the center conductor of a 25' piece of RG-58 I had laying around and the other end of the RG-58 is plugged into the K1. The new antenna tunes up fine on 30, 20, and 15 meters, but on 40 meters the power bounces randomly from 0.1W to 5.0W and I never see an SWR reading. The manual says I'm getting too much RF back into the radio. It suggests I reduce power and try again. That doesn't help. I find it weird that I can transmit on 30' of hookup wire tossed around the room but can't get an acceptable SWR from 50' of wire 25' in the air (albeit close to the house). Any suggestions? Longer? Shorter? I have the option of putting a full 40M dipole on the roof but it will violate my wife's "I don't want to see it from the driveway" rule, and that's important to me. :-) So I'm somewhat limited to the current length. When I get my 2-band board built, it will have to work on 80M, too. I'm eventually going to talk her into some kind of multiband vertical but until she gets used to this piece of wire, I'd like to be able to transmit on 40M. :-) Craig WB0GUU _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
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