Alan - If you are satisfied with the performance of the MFJ tuner, you can certainly give it a try. A friend of mine had one to sell a few years ago, and let me try it on my very NON-resonant antenna. I have a 30' vertical that requires a tuner on any except 30 meters. The tuner in the K3 handles it quite well on 40 through 6 meters, but struggles on 80, where the native SWR is about 18:1. The MFJ 998 could not achieve a decent match on 2 or 3 bands, including 40 meters, which is one of my favorite bands. I wanted to get an amplifier, so I did not did not buy the 998. I now have the KAT500 and KPA500. The KAT500 has no trouble with those bands, so I can run my amp at full power when and where I want... except for 80. For that band, I switch to a Palstar AT-AUTO, and can run the amp at 500 watts. I know they don't all get to the antenna, but I have only 30' of coax from there to the antenna, and the coax is LMR600, so I have mitigated the losses somewhat.
A friend had a MFJ998 that he mounted outside in a weatherproof enclosure, and ran 1500 watts to an inverted L. He was very happy with that setup, until a tree fell on the enclosure and destroyed the tuner. He then bought the MFJ998RT, and last I heard he was satisfied with it. I am sorry, but I am not sure about the integration of the KAT500 with your Icom 7100. Another friend used his Icom 7566PROIII with his KAT500, and had to press Tune on the rig... and then Tune on the tuner... but once the settings were memorized, then just a single DIT from the key, or a syllable or two on SSB and the KAT500 was all set and ready to go. 73 de Dave - K9FN On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 9:47 PM, G4GNX <g4...@theatreorgans.co.uk> wrote: > Hi all. > > I am contemplating purchasing a KPA500 amplifier to complement my K3. > > I currently have a MFJ 998 tuner which is good for 1.5KW but I think that > the KAT500 tuner from Elecraft will be a superior product. Would this be a > sensible assumption? > > If I also buy the KAT500, will it easily interface with my Icom IC700 and > is there a specific setting that would allow me to use the IC7100 “Tune” > button, which allows tuning at reduced power (ISTR it’s set at 10watts)? > > 73, > > Alan. G4GNX > ______________________________________________________________ > 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 dpbu...@gmail.com > ______________________________________________________________ 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
