[Elecraft] Puzzling Incident; Now Have a Problem

[Dennis Payton]

This morning I was listening to my KX1 on 80-meters on an approximately 5/8 
wavelength wire I recently put up, with an L-network tuner at its end, then 
coax ran into the house. Just out of curiosity, I decided to go through the 
other bands and see what the KXAT1 would do, trying to get a match through 
the outside L-network tuned for 80-meters, and of course SWR was high on all 
bands.



Then I decided to listen to 40-meters, so I disconnected the wire antenna 
and connected the coax from my R7 vertical. As soon as I hooked it up 
though, the KX1 power died. I quickly disconnected the antenna, and the rig 
powered back up. I suspected a power supply problem so unplugged it, going 
to internal battery power, but when I started to hook up the antenna again, 
it died again. I then checked to see if there was a static charge on the 
line and there wasn't. I reconnected the 80-meter antenna and it seemed 
fine, but when I tried to reconnect the R7 again, the rig died again. I went 
back & forth several more times with the same result, then I turned on its 
lamp and tried to connect it, and the lamp went out, which alarmed me. 
Knowing there wasn't a charge on the R7's coax, I hooked it up to my ATS-3, 
and the rig worked fine. Then I decided to see what would happen if I hooked 
the rig up through my T1, but when I tried to connect the T1 to it, before 
hooking up the R7, it died again. Then though, that seemed to be the end of 
my problems! I couldn't do anything to get the rig to act up again, and 
couldn't see anything. I verified it worked properly on 40, 30, & 20 into my 
R7, so I was convinced that I no longer had a problem. I was puzzled though, 
as to what had happened.



Tonight when I got home, I decided to hook it back up to the 80-meter 
antenna but found it had trouble matching the already 50 ohm load. Also, it 
said the power output was about half what it has been. I got out a dummy 
load and transmitted into it on 80-meters, and the tuner worked hard to give 
me a 1.4:1 match and the power reading was still low. The other bands were 
still fine though. This led me out to my shack & the oscilloscope. I 
operated the rig off of its internal batteries, which now go down to 8V. on 
transmit, but output was a good clean +/- one watt on "all" bands, which 
surprised me, since the rig's readout was still telling me that it was only 
putting out .5 watt on 80-meters. I recalibrated the tuner which was already 
fine, but have given up on it for the night. I don't yet have a clue though, 
as to why the tuner won't recognize a good match on 80, or the proper power. 
Does anybody have an idea that would help me trace this problem down, and 
does anyone have an idea as to what happened this morning?



Thanks!



Denny    N9JXY