[Elecraft] Question on K1 build - internal or external tuner?

[Mike Morrow]

Joe/AF6NI wrote:

> I have the T1 tuner and love it with the K1...
> I think the internal tuner is important in the trail
> friendly KX1 but not so necessary in the larger K1. 

The T1 is definitely better when one uses an ill-behaved antenna system
that needs a lot of reactance precisely inserted by a tuner to match it
to the K1 output.  But beware of the losses from small tuners with very
thin wire inductances, an aspect happily ignored by many in the Elecraft
community.

That's *much* less necessary if a resonant antenna such as a dipole is used
that requires little or no tuner reactance to achieve satisfactory VSWR.
That's what I use for my campsite/backpack operations, after literally
*decades* of experimentation with many other antenna types.  The K1 has
better CW-segment RF performance than the KX1 on *any* band, and it covers
some of those now important bands that are above the 20m limitation of the
KX1 (15m in particular).  I've never agreed with the common assertion that
the KX1 replaced the K1 for backpacking operations.  Not if RF performance
means anything!

Under these conditions, the internal KAT1 is extremely useful and very
very convenient.

73,
Mike / KK5F