[Elecraft] KAT100 woes... Time to 'fess up...

[Jim Sheldon]

Hi Tom, and all,
Glad to see that I'm not the only one to do things like that.  Mine occurred
this past Saturday. I bought a KX1 and it arrived Friday, so naturally, I
dropped everything and started building.  30 meter board first, then the ATU
to have them ready when the time came.  After that, I built the KX1 itself.
First tests passed fine, and I finished the build Saturday afternoon and it
passed the final test (power output was a little low, but not enough to
worry me.)  I then installed the ATU and did the SWR and Power Calibrations.
This also checked out fine.  Next, I removed the ATU and installed the 30
meter board.  When I attempted the alignment, the whole radio was deaf as a
post.  None of the trimmers appeared to do anything, and I had an NGEN board
hooked up to give it lots of noise to chew on.  

After tearing out what little hair I have left, I got out the desoldering
equipment and prepared to remove the 30 meter board, expecting that I might
have busted on or more of those micro miniature RF chokes.  Just before
clipping the first wire, the light dawned - I hadn't put the jumper across
pins 1 and 3 of the antenna header that routes RF to and from the ATU.
Since the ATU was out of the radio, without that jumper, there was no RF
path from the BNC connector to the rest of the rig.  No bloody wonder it
didn't hear anything.  I grabbed an old resistor lead and quickly replaced
the jumper.  Turned on the NGEN again and BINGO, all trimmers actually did
something.  I re-aligned 20 and 40 as called out in the manual, and then did
the 30 meter alignment.  Put the ATU back in and ran the final tests.  The
whole thing worked like it was supposed to.

Note to anyone that hasn't built a KX1 yet and plans on it, REMEMBER THAT
JUMPER when removing the ATU from the radio if you plan on leaving it out
for any reason.  

I wasn't going to tell anyone about it, but since Tom "fessed up" to his
error, I figured I ought to as well if it might save someone else a problem
in the future.  The need for the jumper is actually mentioned in the book,
and I HAD read it.  Just forgot it in my excitement to get my KX1 on the
air.  

Oh yeah, first contact with the KX1 was a DX station (PA600GOES - yeah I
know it's a weird call that's pa six hundred goes) in the Netherlands.  Got
a 539 on 20 meters - KX1 and a CushCraft A3S tri bander up 25 feet.

Jim Sheldon, W0EB
Wichita, KS
K2 #4338
KX1 #1268


> -----Original Message-----
> From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net 
> [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Tom Hammond
> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 10:00 AM
> To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [Elecraft] KAT100 woes... Time to 'fess up...
> 
> 
> Hi Folks:
> 
> Man, I just HATE it when I have to come clean... but here 
> goes... mainly 
> for the benefit of anyone else out there who runs into the 
> same problem...