On an empathetic note... Can Elecraft come up a price-appropriate tuner design that will survive hams at 500 watt RTTY?
In the midst of trying to concoct a remote home brew tuner to put 160-30 meters on a 135 foot end-fed wire, the calculator and equations starting telling me that voltages and currents that would have to be switched under power could run over 10 kV or 20 amps, depending on frequency, at 1.5 kW. IF there were a bullet-proof, ham-proof way of insuring that contacts were NEVER, EVER switched under power, some things could be done. But I can't figure out how to keep ME from doing that when I'm really stupid at the end of a contest. There is a point at which bulletproof tuner designs seem to warp into an entire new expensive component universe. Depending on the engineer and personal or commercial risk tolerance, and whether that might be RTTY or not, that power level is 200-400 watts. After that you are talking Collins Radio kind of commercial/military grade designs with motors, vacuum relays and capacitors. Less than that and one is frying stuff that is perfectly satisfactory at 200-400 watts. The commercial risk is obvious. Burned contacts will always be blamed on the manufacturer. If he can't design something that can't burn, for a price a customer is willing to pay, what's the point. Go out and price a pair of motor driven vacuum variable capacitors big enough to cover the variation on 160m and with the voltage rating to stand up to tuning antennas at voltage nodes. Gak. Sigh. Kind of like the sound barrier, not impossible but definitely a new mode beyond it. The one possible work-around is an Elecraft tuner that will not work unless hooked up to an Elecraft amp and a Kx via proprietary protocol so it knows whether it is QRO or not and can seamlessly drop out of QRO for tuning. Something like how the K2 and the KPA100 work. 73, Guy. On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 11:06 AM, John Fritze <fritzej...@gmail.com> wrote: > I agree, yes please, a remote-able, weatherproofed 500W tuner (capable > of 160-6m) would create an instant order here too. I have relied on > SGC tuners for many years, mobile, marine mobile and now at my small > suburban plot where I have a custom DX engineering 50+ foot vertical > with 40 radials. The beauty of SGC tuners is they only require a 12v > source. In every situation these tuners have performed flawlessly in > harsh environments for years. I was planning on getting a 500W Tokyo > Hi Power amp at Dayton this year, but seeing the Elecraft amp, I will > wait. The problem is that no one makes a 160-6M remote weather proof > tuner capable of 500-600 watts which only needs 12v. SGC's 500 watt > tuner doesn't do 160M according to their specs. What's a space poor > ham to do? > ______________________________________________________________ > 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 > ______________________________________________________________ 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
