[Elecraft] OT Weird antenna fault causes K2 confusion

[Vic Winton]

Yo Guys,

Last weekend I had a session playing with  my newly built KAT2. I spent some
time tuning up my 160m dipole (+ 70 feet of open wire feeder+ balun in the
shack ) antenna  on all bands.

Then I noticed that on 160m the receiver wasn't working properly. I was
getting bc breakthrough in several places across the band, and "proper"
signals were very weak - indeed almost non existent.

I suspected that I may have damaged a relay either on the KAT 2 or on the
160m module. Possibly too much tune power into  a high swr? Maybe a blown
cap in the ow pass filter....Oh God what have I done?.........

Anyway , depressed, I went outside and did some work in the garden then
decided to spend a few minutes checking out the antenna.(the sun was
shining)

I noticed that the feeder has got twisted by the wind so I did a quick fix
to straighten it out.

Later in the shack I tried 160m again and the "fault" was gone. No bc
breakthrough and topband sigs werre fine.

I realised that the feeder was probably shorting out about 30 feet along the
line and somehow this was causing bc breakthrough. I can't figure out why
this effect should occur. Of course the weak topband sigs are understandable
but bc breakthrough? It can't be simple obverload as there was effectively
only 30 feet of antenna which was shorted at the far end, and the normal
fault free "full dipole" situation causes no problems.

Some kind of weird rectification perhaps.

Weird.......................

73  Vic GW4JUN
K2 1926

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