[Elecraft] Funny K4 Story

[Tom Doligalski]

Last week Monday I received K4 SN0110. The Brown Truck came at about 2 PM.

That morning I had checked into an 80M net using my trusty K3. For 8)M is use an inverted V. All was well.

Monday afternoon was a frenzy of setting up and using the new K4. Pretty easy setup.

All week long I used the K4. All was good, but I was disappointed at signal strengths on 80M. I kept thinking that the K4 just couldn’t receive well on 80M!

Yesterday I was out in the back doing yard work. That’s when I noticed that the support ropes on BOTH ends of the 80M inverted V had failed, and the the antenna was lying on the ground!

We had had a storm come through here Monday mid-day, and my supposition is that the support ropes had failed. I restored the support ropes, and low and below the K4 works well on 80M again!

I normally would have noticed the change in SWR, and realized that I had an antenna problem. But, of course, I had tuned the K4 for the first time on 80M when I received it!

A learning moment (operator error?). Gonna try to check the antennas out a bit more frequently!

73, Tom W4KX