I agree with using MAN and presetting the tuner. I never used the AUTO setting. It would be nice if you could program which bands you want the tuner to be used on and have it automatically bypass when not needed.
John KK9A Richard Ferch ve3iay wrote: FWIW, I have had a KAT500 for a few years now. I never use the KAT500's Auto setting. Once the KAT500's memories are set up, the Manual setting does everything I need. First, with the KPA500 in Standby (or turned off), for every band/antenna combination I use, I trained the KAT500 across the band. I did this by tuning to a frequency near the bottom of the band, tapping the KAT500's Tune button and then pressing the K3's Tune button (a long press, since Tune is a "hold" function) and left the K3's Tune signal running until the KAT500 found the best match, then turned the K3's Tune back off. Tune up 20 kHz and press the Tune buttons first on the KAT500 and then on the K3 until the KAT500 finds a match. Keep doing this until the band is covered. Repeat for all other band/antenna combinations. On 10 meters, you only have to do this every 100 kHz instead of every 20 kHz, and on 6m, only every 200 kHz. On 160m, the settings to be remembered are every 10 kHz. Once this set-and-forget once-only training step was completed, I just leave the KAT500 in Manual mode all the time. As I tune the K3 around, the KAT500 reads the frequency from the K3 and automatically selects the antenna for that band and the settings I trained it with for that frequency and antenna. You can hear the relays in the KAT500 click as you move from one band to another, or from one frequency memory segment to another one as the remembered tuner settings change. As long as the impedance presented by your antenna's feedline to the tuner does not change from what it was when you trained the tuner, the remembered memory settings will work fine. Sometimes, e.g. when it rains or snows, the SWR with the original setting starts to get higher. Perhaps this is the kind of situation where the Auto setting would touch the settings up automatically, but I heartily dislike having the tuner suddenly spring into action mid-QSO. Instead, I wait for a quiet moment, put the KPA500 in standby, put the KAT500 in Tune mode and use the K3's Tune button again in order to find the best match for the current conditions. As soon as the KAT500 finds a match, I put the KPA500 back into operate and carry on. Usually when this happens, the abnormal tuner settings are only needed for a few hours, and as the humidity returns to normal I redo the training procedure once more to bring the KAT500's memory for that particular frequency/antenna combination back to normal. 73, Rich VE3KI ______________________________________________________________ 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
