[Elecraft] SWR question

[Barthold Lichtenbelt]

Hi Don,

As you say "many ways to skin the cat" :-) Thanks for that last tip, hadn't
thought of that and will work as well of course!

Barthold

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Wilhelm [mailto:donwilh at embarqmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 9:35 PM
To: Barthold Lichtenbelt; elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] SWR question

Barthold,

Another way to accomplish that is to power off the KPA500 and bypass the
KAT500.  Then the K3 will display the SWR.  There are several ways to "skin
that cat".

Actually, if you 'train' the KAT500 to your antennas and want to monitor the
status of your antennas, put the KAT500 into manual mode after the training
(you should do that anyway) - and then monitor the SWR seen by the LEDs on
either the KPA500 or the KAT500.  If there is a significant change, then
take a look at your antenna(s) with your antenna analyzer.  
If no significant change in the SWR indication, then just keep operating
because all is well.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 9/14/2016 11:01 PM, Barthold Lichtenbelt wrote:
> Hi Don,
>
> Ok, this all came from Dick saying that you can see the "bypass SWR" 
> that the KAT500 measures with the PC utility. But if you don't have 
> that hooked up, a simple trick seemed to be to put the KAT500 in 
> bypass mode, and see what the KPA500 tells you on its SWR led bar. 
> That can give you an idea of the SWR past the KAT500 (thus the Antenna 
> SWR). Of course, if the SWR is too far off the KPA500 will complain.
>
> If you have a P3 with TX sensor, and you want to know your antenna 
> SWR, then putting the P3 TX sensor after the KAT500 seems like the way 
> to go. That way you can quickly see how well your antenna is actually 
> matched to the feedline, and you can use the KAT500 in tune mode (and not
in bypass mode).
>
> Of course, a real antenna analyzer (I use a RigExpert 600) will be 
> more accurate.
>
> Hope that explains it Don!
>