I just got a T1 a few days ago. Tried it at 35 watts (an HF Packer amplifier) and so far no ill results. This is driving the amp. with a K1 at
about 2 watts on CW only. The T1 has far greater range than the KAT1 internal coupler. 73, Sandy W5TVW ------------------------------------ The reason the bridge circuit in there has a double-stacked toroid on one side was that Tom, N0SS, tried something like 40 watts into his original beta-test unit and it worked except for that core getting hot enough to blister a finger. Two cores help avoid saturation at all power levels. So, if you're pushing the power limit, checking the temperature to the bridge circuit toroids (near the connectors - the ones with a single turn wire primary) will tell you if the smoke is about to escape <G>. Obviously the danger is in overheating and fracturing a core. That can happen among the other cores too, depending upon the impedance the antenna presents. If it's showing a low impedance (current loop), enough current may flow to saturate a core in the L-network. The symptom of that happening is that the tuner will find a nice match at low power then, as the power is increased, the SWR jumps up high when the current increases enough to saturate the core (or the core heats enough to reach its curie temperature). That causes the inductance of that coil to change, throwing the system out of tune. Of course, over time, one might also experience damaged relay contacts from excessive current when feeding low impedances or arcing due to high RF voltages when feeding high impedances. Since that all depends upon the impedance the antenna presents and the actual RF power, individual experiences will vary a great deal. As usual, Elecraft is pretty conservative in their ratings, but that's done for a reason. At 20 watts, any impedance the T1 will match won't do any damage to the tuner no matter how long it's used. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ 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 Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
