I tried to use my Elecraft T1 ATU this weekend at a special event station outing on Jamestown Island, VA as an adjunct to the main station. I used my NC2030 on 20 mtrs, and ATS-3 on 40 Mtrs, both about 5 watts output, or that was to be the plan. The antenna was pretty poor, an end fed wire of roughly 100 feet sloping from about 10 feet up to about 30 to 35 feet, with about 20 feet of counterpoise wire under it. I used a BNC to banana adapter on the antenna output of the T1 with the antenna to red, counterpoise to black. Initially the T1 tuned this wire on 20 mtrs to an SWR of 1.0:1, according to the Info function of the T1. I made one contact on 20 to a station in FL, but the band conditions weren't too good at the time, so I switched over to 40. The tuner refused to tune this situation. It would not even start a tune cycle....dead silence, no relay activity. I tried different frequencies on 40 with same luck, and now the Info function of the T1 showed an SWR of 9.9:1. I went back to 20, but this time it refused to tune here either, stuck at 9.9:1 SWR. So I packed it all up for the day. When I got back home, I tried the T1 with the ATS-3, and my K2 in CAL S mode, and it tuned up the dipoles and loop antenna here just as always, first time.
My question is, if the SWR of the random wire in the field was so high that the T1 couldn't handle it, would it not even attempt to tune it? I would have thought it would have searched around for some time, then stopped at it's best shot. Does this T1 sound like a normal one, or is there something intermittent going on with it? Just hoping someone out there has had a similar experience and could offer a bit of advice on what's going on.
Thanks,
Ken, NU4I
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