[Elecraft] Re: KX1 antenna experiments

[Larry Kayser]

Greetings:

The limited tuning range of the KXAT1 antenna tuner originally bothered 
me some.  Since I started working with it, and I am still having a few 
problems with the unit but that is another story, I have experimented 
with a simple technique to deal with very short or wires approaching 1/2 
wave long.  I am not keen to measure the length of wires that I toss 
into a tree, so I have taken to carrying a small coil with me that I 
just put in series with the random wire if the ATU is unable to achieve 
a reasonable SWR.  The action is to simply move the effective length of 
the wire along a ways, thus avoiding the 1/2 wave length of wire.  This 
could also be done with a small capacitor, but I have not yet taken one 
of these in my pocket when I go for a walk to the back of my island home.

The coil I use is about 30 turns on a 1r5 inch form, spaced one wire 
diameter.  I have never worked out the inductance, it was left over from 
a receiver experiment some years ago.

Larry
VA3LK