K3 Internal Tuner and 43' Vertical

[Richard Thorne-3]

Just curious if anyone else is using the K3 internal tuner with a 43'
vertical.  Will handle all the bands 10 - 160?  Or do I need to purchase
an external tuner.  I'm about to put one up to get me on the air.  This
will be a temporary antenna while I build the antenna farm here at the
new qth.

What I would really like is the new Elecraft tuner located at the base
of the vertical.  I have an sgc-239 that I used at my last qth, and it
was located at the base of the vertical.  Worked great.  Unfortunately
its only a 200 watt tuner and it won't handle the KPA500 I'm about to order.

Thanks

Rich - N5ZC


______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

[Phil Salas]

"Just curious if anyone else is using the K3 internal tuner with a 43'
vertical.  Will handle all the bands 10 - 160?  Or do I need to purchase
an external tuner.  I'm about to put one up to get me on the air.  This
will be a temporary antenna while I build the antenna farm here at the
new qth.  What I would really like is the new Elecraft tuner located at the
base
of the vertical.  I have an sgc-239 that I used at my last qth, and it
was located at the base of the vertical.  Worked great."

The K3 internal tuner may or may not be able to tune 160-meters - I suspect
it will have no problem on 80 meters.  It depends on the length and loss of
your feedline.  The 43-foot vertical has HORRIBLE SWR on 160- and 80-meters.
And so your line loss will be very high.  You need about 55uhy of total
inductance to match the 43-footer on 160 meters at the antenna base which I
believe is more than the K3 tuner has available.  But if the feedline length
and loss is just right, the matching range of the K3 tuner may be sufficient
on that band.  Incidentally, the SGC-239 does not have enough inductance to
match the antenna on 160 meters.  If you were able to do this, you were
simply matching into the internal losses in the tuner.  I did an evaluation
of the SGC-230 with the 43-foot vertical (info on my website at
www.ad5x.com), and as part of that I found that the SG-230 would match into
an open circuit.  Obviously it was matching into its own internal losses.  I
built an external inductor for use with 43-footers that worked well with my
MFJ-927.

The new MFJ remote autotuners look interesting, but they also do not have
enough inductance to match a 43-footer on 160 meters.  It will be
interesting to see if the remote KAT500 will have enough inductance to match
a 43-footer on 160 meters.  Meanwhile, if you use your 43-footer on 160- and
80-meters (like I do) consider base matching on those bands.  See the base
matching article on my website.

Phil - AD5X

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

[w0mu]

I hope you have a 4:1 Unun at the antenna.  I am going to play with one
of these antennas at 31ft and 43ft for an antenna down at J6 as they are
light and easy to take and seem to work on all bands.  It would make an
ok backup/secondary antenna.

On 9/18/2011 10:49 AM, Phil & Debbie Salas wrote:

> "Just curious if anyone else is using the K3 internal tuner with a 43'
> vertical.  Will handle all the bands 10 - 160?  Or do I need to purchase
> an external tuner.  I'm about to put one up to get me on the air.  This
> will be a temporary antenna while I build the antenna farm here at the
> new qth.  What I would really like is the new Elecraft tuner located at the
> base
> of the vertical.  I have an sgc-239 that I used at my last qth, and it
> was located at the base of the vertical.  Worked great."
>
> The K3 internal tuner may or may not be able to tune 160-meters - I suspect
> it will have no problem on 80 meters.  It depends on the length and loss of
> your feedline.  The 43-foot vertical has HORRIBLE SWR on 160- and 80-meters.
> And so your line loss will be very high.  You need about 55uhy of total
> inductance to match the 43-footer on 160 meters at the antenna base which I
> believe is more than the K3 tuner has available.  But if the feedline length
> and loss is just right, the matching range of the K3 tuner may be sufficient
> on that band.  Incidentally, the SGC-239 does not have enough inductance to
> match the antenna on 160 meters.  If you were able to do this, you were
> simply matching into the internal losses in the tuner.  I did an evaluation
> of the SGC-230 with the 43-foot vertical (info on my website at
> www.ad5x.com), and as part of that I found that the SG-230 would match into
> an open circuit.  Obviously it was matching into its own internal losses.  I
> built an external inductor for use with 43-footers that worked well with my
> MFJ-927.
>
> The new MFJ remote autotuners look interesting, but they also do not have
> enough inductance to match a 43-footer on 160 meters.  It will be
> interesting to see if the remote KAT500 will have enough inductance to match
> a 43-footer on 160 meters.  Meanwhile, if you use your 43-footer on 160- and
> 80-meters (like I do) consider base matching on those bands.  See the base
> matching article on my website.
>
> Phil - AD5X
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

--
J6/W0MU November 21 - December 1 2011 CQ WW DX CW

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

[Bill W4ZV]

Phil & Debbie Salas wrote

The K3 internal tuner may or may not be able to tune 160-meters - I suspect
it will have no problem on 80 meters.  It depends on the length and loss of
your feedline.  The 43-foot vertical has HORRIBLE SWR on 160- and 80-meters.
And so your line loss will be very high.  

I'd attach a 40' wire to the top of the vertical, run it back down next to the vertical for 40-10m and it should be invisible on those bands.  For 80-160m, pull it out as far as possible (or rig an attachment rope to an adjacent tree) to add some top-loading on those bands.  It's not instant band-switching but should work far better than base-loading.

73,  Bill  W4ZV

[K4SC]

I ran my K3 with internal autotuner on the DX Engineering 43' fast-taper vertical with their 4:1 UNUN with excellent results on 40 meters and up.  I tried a couple of local qso's on 75 and it worked ok, but I was only running 100watts on a KW band.  I tried loading on 160 meters and think it did load, but the QRN was so bad I never tried to make any contacts.

This was all at my Arizona QTH where the vertical was my only option.  I replaced my Butternut vertical with the 43' vertical and definitely thought it was the better antenna.  Ground field was poultry netting spread out in an X pattern about 30' on each side.  If I could hear it, I generally could work it.  Again all done with 100Watts.  You refer to the Elecraft tuner for the KPA-500, I don't know there is one, yet.

Good Luck

Chuck K4SC, York SC

[K4SC]

I forgot to add that MFJ makes a switchable inductor for 43' verticals based on the design by AD5X?  I think that is the designer.  I communicated with him and he verified it was his design that was used.  I asked for a copy of the then unplublished technical manual for that device and MFJ sent it to me.  I was strongly considering either building my own or purchasing theirs.  It has remote switching using injected voltage on the coax, making it pretty easy to impliment.

[Phil Shepard]

It has been brought to my attention that the Elecraft web site gives the
frequency of the weekly North American SSB net as 14.314 MHz.  We moved to
14.3035 MHz many months ago, but I must admit that I neglected to
communicate this to Elecraft so that they could update the site information.
I am very sorry for the confusion that may have caused.  I will contact
Elecraft to fix this.

The net meets at 1800Z on 13.3035 MHz each Sunday.  I hope to see a lot of
you there.  Thank you.

73,
Phil NS7P

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

[Jeff Cochrane - VK4XA]

CONTENTS DELETED

The author has deleted this message.

[Phil Shepard]

Thanks, Jeff, for pointing this out.  My error - it of course is 14.3035
MHz.  I've got to quit getting older, HI!

73,
Phil NS7P

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Cochrane - VK4BOF [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2011 7:09 PM
To: Phillip Shepard; [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Elecraft NA SSB net frequency


Phil,
Isn't 13.3035 out of band for everyone?
(I know it's 14.3.35MHz and I'd love to join you all there but 14.3xx is
just too high in frequency for my tri-bander, it's setup for closer to
14.200 and I don't have a tuner yet that can cope with the KPA500)

73 de
Jeff Cochrane - VK4BOF
East Innisfail
QLD, Australia
K3 #4257, KPA500 #161
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phillip Shepard" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 11:54 AM
Subject: [Elecraft] Elecraft NA SSB net frequency

> It has been brought to my attention that the Elecraft web site gives the
> frequency of the weekly North American SSB net as 14.314 MHz.  We moved to
> 14.3035 MHz many months ago, but I must admit that I neglected to
> communicate this to Elecraft so that they could update the site
> information.
> I am very sorry for the confusion that may have caused.  I will contact
> Elecraft to fix this.
>
> The net meets at 1800Z on 13.3035 MHz each Sunday.  I hope to see a lot of
> you there.  Thank you.
>
> 73,
> Phil NS7P
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

[Cady, Fred]

I recently started to learn how to use W7EL's Eznec antenna modeling
program so I decided to try to model the 43' vertical. I don't quite see
the magic but a 4:1 un-un looks like it will bring the impedance into
reason for 80, 40, 14 and 18. The antenna resonates at 5.7, 16.7 and 28
MHz.

I posted the SWR and a couple of elevation plots at www.ke7x.com (click
on The 43' Vertical).

73 all,
Fred
KE7X

Fred Cady
fcady at ke7x.com
"The Elecraft K3: Design, Configuration and Operation"
www.ke7x.com
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:elecraft-
> [hidden email]] On Behalf Of K4SC
> Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2011 4:51 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 Internal Tuner and 43' Vertical
>
> I ran my K3 with internal autotuner on the DX Engineering 43' fast-
> taper
> vertical with their 4:1 UNUN with excellent results on 40 meters and
> up.  I
> tried a couple of local qso's on 75 and it worked ok, but I was only
> running
> 100watts on a KW band.  I tried loading on 160 meters and think it did
> load,
> but the QRN was so bad I never tried to make any contacts.
>
> This was all at my Arizona QTH where the vertical was my only option.
> I
> replaced my Butternut vertical with the 43' vertical and definitely
> thought
> it was the better antenna.  Ground field was poultry netting spread

out

> in
> an X pattern about 30' on each side.  If I could hear it, I generally
> could
> work it.  Again all done with 100Watts.  You refer to the Elecraft
> tuner for
> the KPA-500, I don't know there is one, yet.
>
> Good Luck
>
> Chuck K4SC, York SC
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/K3-
> Internal-Tuner-and-43-Vertical-tp6805633p6806800.html
> Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

[Jim Brown-10]

On 9/18/2011 9:10 PM, Cady, Fred wrote:
> I don't quite see the magic

Didn't you drink the kool-aid, Fred?  :)

73, Jim K9YC
______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

[Edward R Cole]

I have a 43-foot high x 130-foot long inverted-L that I use on
500-KHz with a HB base coil to ground.  I tap 2-1/2 turns from the
bottom to feed with coax using ferrite chokes for common-mode
currents.  Works very reliably.  On 500-KHz I have winter and summer
taps as the frozen ground changes continuity affecting my ground system.

This fall I hope to locate tap positions on the coil to run at 160 & 80m


73, Ed - KL7UW, WD2XSH/45
======================================
BP40IQ   500 KHz - 10-GHz   www.kl7uw.com
EME: 50-1.1kw?, 144-1.4kw, 432-100w, 1296-60w, 3400-?
DUBUS Magazine USA Rep [hidden email]
======================================

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

[k6dgw]

On 9/18/2011 9:10 PM, Cady, Fred wrote:
> I recently started to learn how to use W7EL's Eznec antenna modeling
> program so I decided to try to model the 43' vertical. I don't quite see
> the magic but a 4:1 un-un looks like it will bring the impedance into
> reason for 80, 40, 14 and 18. The antenna resonates at 5.7, 16.7 and 28
> MHz.

Years ago, I would get excited when I read about "The New Antenna" that
doubles as a floor lamp to keep spouse happy and on which you can
operate all bands and make DXCC in a weekend.  Then, I discovered James
Maxwell got it all right back in the in the 19th century.  Some things
never change, that's why I graduated in Math.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2011 Cal QSO Party 1-2 Oct 2011
- www.cqp.org
______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html