[Elecraft] KAT500 auto trainer

[Andy Durbin]

Back on Dec 7th I posted "Popular wisdom is that KAT500 should be trained for all frequencies in a band and then operated in manual mode.  This is what I do at my station but I find the training process to be a bit tedious and  I'm considering automating the training process."

I now have a test version working.  It currently has 2 functions:


  1.   Sweep and Autotune - Set TX frequency and KAT frequency to center of first bin of current band.  When frequencies are verified then initiate autotune and TX with autotune power.  When tune complete advance to next bin center frequency and repeat.
  2.  Sweep and check SWR -  Set TX frequency and KAT frequency to center of first bin of current band.  When frequencies are verified then TX with 5 W  for 2 seconds to allow a check of LP-100A indicated SWR or complex load.  Then advance to next bin center frequency and repeat.

The tuning solution for first autotune pass seems to be rather poor for some bins but it improves with a second or third pass.  (I understand the result depends on the power setting but there seems to be more to it than that. Auto fine tune is enabled. )

My last autotune sweep of the entire 160 m band took 1 minute 10 seconds.  The check sweep took 1 minute 20 seconds.  Check sweep time should be constant but the time for the autotune sweep will be quite variable.

A future refinement of the check sweep may be to set an SWR threshold and log all frequencies that don't indicate better than that value.  These would then be presented in sequence for manual adjustment.

So, still a work in progress, but appears to have potential.  And yes, there will be an option to CW ident after tuning each bin although my preference is to minimize time on frequency.

Andy, k3wyc