Friday 25 January 2013

KAT500 In motion




Thanks to W5LUA I got to borrow his FT847 to try out the KAT500 with 100W drive. The FT847 cannot provide band data for the KAT500 but as it measures the incoming RF frequency it should be able to work out what band the FT847 is transmitting on

Firstly I tried it on my HF6v vertical which is resonant on 80/40/30/20/50/10m. On 80m,  the vertical , who's bandwidth is low is resonant on 3560kHz  but the KAT500 gave a good match up to 3800kHz. The KAT500 also managed to match the vertical on 17m and 12m.

The ATU is quite noisy while tuning as relays are switched in and out. Tuning is normally achieved in under 5 seconds

Secondly I tried it on my Alpha Delta DX-EE antenna which covers 160/80/40/30. It is very narrow bandwidth on the lower two bands but the ATU managed a match over a wide bandwidth. It also managed to match the antenna  on 20/17/15/12/10

The ATU needed around 9W for it to reliably autotune.

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