[Elecraft] K3S will not load or tune on 160 M/SOLVED

[HB]

Easy is good!!!


From: K1dj
Sent: Monday, December 3, 2018 2:06 PM
To: Hank
Cc: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3S will not load or tune on 160 M/SOLVED

Thanks all for the speedy and helpful replies!  Wish I had run this by you BEFORE the contest rather than after.  I went back to the K3S and switched through various bands down to 160, and discovered for reasons unknown, on this band I had never used, the rig was set to “Ant 2.”  Since I am using a KPA 500 and KAT 500, everything goes through Ant 1, and I had had no occasion to use the Ant switch on the K3 itself for quite a while.  Switched to Ant 1 on 160M, and the inverted L tunes quickly and easily.

As they say here in Massachusetts, you guys are “wicked awesome!’

Rich

Anyway, switch to Ant 1 for 160M has apparently solved the problem!

Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 3, 2018, at 12:58 PM, Hank <hbjr at optilink.us> wrote:
> 
> 
> I have a "long" 80 meter dipole that I use for 160.  It is too long for 80 but not long enough for 160.  At 70' above ground level, it's SWR is 3:1 on 160.  My K3s (internal tuner) matches it to 1.3:1 according to the radio's display.  I did not have to do anything special with the radio to make that work.
> 
> 
> I do have a pretty good RF ground though.  Before I could get any decent performance on 80 (including decent SWR), I added to my RF grounding.  Where the HF coax enters the shack, the shield is pulled to ground (1' of #4 copper to an 8' copper clad ground rod).  That same grounding plate is also connected to another 8' ground rod about 15' away which is right below the service entrance to the house.  A piece of #4 connects from that ground rod to the electric meter base.  All of the #4 is buried except at connections where I've used Pentrox for CU/CU connections.  The ground rod at my HF coax entrance also is tied to 2" wide copper strap that runs into the shack to a copper bar (old -48vdc grounding bar from a phone switch) and all of my equipment is tied to that bar.  Under the shack where the copper strap comes in, the CATV coax and CAT 3 telephone wiring are grounded to that
> strap.  The CATV coax has a little 4' ground rod right at the wall entrance that is tied to the electric meter base also.
> 
> 
> This also cured some issues on 80 meters running an RF amp where I could make the phone ring and change channels on the TV when I keyed up!  All of that is fixed.
> 
> 
> My $0.02 (and that's all it's worth :)
> 
> 
> Hank
> K4HYJ
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
>> From: "Richard Hoffman, K1DJ via Elecraft" <elecraft at mailman.qth.net> 
>> To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net 
>> Date: 12/03/18 12:24 
>> Subject: [Elecraft] K3S will not load or tune on 160 M 
>> 
>> I put up my first 160 meter antenna last week in anticipation of participating in last weekend's contest.  I managed to get the antenna -- a slow slung inverted L with a single raised radial as a compromise on my tiny 100 by 100 foot lot -- up in time.  I then managed to get the antenna down to an SWR of 2 to 1 measured by a Rig Expert AA55 zoom analyzer, at the balun to which the raised wire and radial are directly attached, and ythen got the same 2.0 SWR reading at the shack end of a borrowed piece of about 50 feet of RG-213.  [I recognize that 2 to 1 is not perfect by any means, but it was certainly within the range of my Elecraft equipment, I thought.]  
>> 
>> But then my K3S simply refused to tune or load into the antenna, either directly, using its internal ATU, or routed through my KPA-500 to a KAT-500 tuner.  In both circumstances, the rig and/or tuner showed an SWR around 25 to 1, and tuned at best to around 16 to 1, resulting in no apparent RF output.
>> After trying to fix this in various ways, I gave up on the 160M contest and turned to other pursuits, while seeking advice from several Elecraft-loving, 160M-using, friends.
>> 
>> It finally dawned on me this morning to connect the rig to my dummy load.  The result of attempting to tune and load the dummy load is exactly the same as it was trying to use the new inverted-L:  initial 25 to 1 SWR, tunes down only to 16.9 to 1.
>> The rig, amp, internal and external tuners, and dummy load work fine on 80M through 6M.  This is my first time trying them all on 160M.
>> QUESTION:  Are there special configuration or other steps I need to take to operate the K3S on 160 meters?  Do these symptoms suggest any other problems that you can help solve?
>> 
>> Please advise, and thanks!
>> 73 -
>> Rich, K1DJScituate, MA
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>