[Elecraft] OCF antennas

[Edward R. Cole]

K2AV wrote:
"We just have 50 ohm coax and SWR meters on the brain, and have a terrible
time seeing outside the rather narrow 50 ohm coax/low SWR box.  And we're
boxing ourselves in further with single-Z transistor amps that fall off the
table and go blurg off 50 ohm Z.  (Whatever happened to
I-don't-give-a-d*mn-about-SWR tetrode amps, like 807's, 6146's and
4CX1000A?  I worked DXCC and had a BPL medallion before I ever had an SWR
meter.  Just can't understand how I managed.  :>)    Oops, forgot, Alpha's
8410 monster uses a pair of those 4CX1000A's, and it really doesn't give a
d*mn about swr, either.)"
-----------------------------------
Yes, but those "nice ole tube amps" almost universally used pi-net 
outputs which are tuners in-fact.  Ferrites make wide-band 
transformation possible so solid-state no-tune amps are 
possible.  Transistor impedances are so low it makes it critical to 
load them properly.  But we seem to come full circle back to using tuners.

I bought a small mobile MFJ-945E tuner for my station due to being on 
a budget.  When I got the K3/10 it worked very nice with my array of 
18 antennas.  Later a friend was selling an old Drake QRO tuner so I 
bought it (MN2000) and it now tunes the output of my new 300w HF 
amp.  Too bad it does not have 160m.

It has two coax antenna outputs (direct or tuned) so I have one 
connected to a dummy load and the other to my 5-pos antenna switch 
(manual).  I will eventually run the output of the K3/10 thru the MFJ 
to a 4-pos coax switch to chose either 6m, 6m-eme, or HF (with a 
spare position unused).  The HF pos. goes to the 300w amp which has a 
bypass relay, so I can run QRP or with some power.

The Drake tuner works really nice and has a power meter to monitor 
the HF amp so I do not have to commit my Bird43 to that.  I sure like 
the big knobs for tuning and smooth operation of them.




73, Ed - KL7UW, WD2XSH/45
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