[Elecraft] KPA-1500 tuner questions

[Peter Dougherty]

I have a couple of questions about the KPA1500's internal tuner. 

For the most part, I leave the tuner inline. Except for two sub-bands (SSB
on both 40 and 80m) I am well below 2:1, and maybe 2.5:1 at the top end of
160m. The KPA does a good job throughout.

The problems/questions arise when I need to transition between the KPA's
internal tuner on the bottom ends of both 40 and 80, and the external
Palstar HF-Auto tuner, which I need to wrangle very high SWRs on the phone
portions of those bands. Obviously I don't want both automatic tuners inline
at the same time. The situation is most acute on 40.

The HF-Auto (external automatic tuner) is bypassed everywhere except the
range of 3650 to 4000, and 7100 to 7300. I would like to automatically have
the KPA1500's tuner go into bypass at the above ranges, just as the Palstar
auto-tuner bypasses outside of those ranges. Is this somehow possible, or
must I manually switch the tuner in and out when I cross the appropriate
thresholds?

Second question, and I think this relates to the whole "bins" thing, which I
don't understand, relates to having different tuning solutions on the same
band segment. This could be handy for me on 80m. Unlike on 40, for 80 I have
an inverted vee, and it's easy for me to drop the ends and change the length
of the antenna, so that instead of being resonant at 3550 I could make it
3700. I did this for the ARRL-SSB contest and it worked pretty well. Is it
possible to have two different sets of memorized tuning solutions in the
KPA-1500, in the event I have the vee set for CW (normal) or SSB (for phone
contests only)?


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73 and Good DX
Peter, W2IRT



President, North Jersey DX Association

DXCC Card Checker
Letter O Manager, ARRL Incoming 2nd District QSL bureau