[Elecraft] Is a K3 ATU with balanced outputs possible?

[Andrew Moore]

Great; thank you for the trivia, very helpful. I figured it had already
been considered and that there was a good reason for the current
configuration.

The BL2 following the KAT3 was exactly one option I was considering. I've
read about several cases in which ops had success, but read others in which
the balun was heating perhaps due to excessive reactance on the antenna
side. Reactance is likely dependent on the frequency/band and several
factors in the antenna system which could explain the mixed results.

I think I will try this approach and enjoy the experimenting.

All: Not looking to turn this in to an OT antenna theory thread, but if you
have specific experience with this configuration, I'd like to hear (KAT3 to
BL2 to ladder to simple dipole).

Thanks,
--Andrew, NV1B
maineware.net
..


On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Don Wilhelm <w3fpr at embarqmail.com> wrote:

> Andrew,
>
> A bit of 'trivia' first:
> That was "supposed" to be a solution in the KAT500 tuner.  The initial
> design put the balun on the input of the tuner, and attempted to "float"
> the rest of the tuner while trying to maintain balance.
>
> There were problems with maintaining balance through the rest of the
> tuner, while studies indicated there was no efficiency difference between
> the balun at the input vs. the balun at the output, so the design was
> changed to an unbalanced design driving (if required or desired) a balun at
> the output of the tuner.
>
> "trivia off":
>
> So more specific to your question, a balanced output from the K3 KAT3 can
> easily be obtained by using an Elecraft BL2 on the output side of the KAT3.
>
>