Thanks for the info.
To clarify some things:
My indoor random wire antenna is _very_ makeshift. My rigs hook up to an
LDG Z-11 tuner with coax, then on the tuner's output it goes to coax again,
which goes to a 4:1 balun. One end of the balun goes to the antenna, the
other to some multiconductor rotator cable cut to different lengths for
different bands, thrown around the floor. I think now the problem is not
with the TV, but with the speakers/DVD/receiver setup (made in China, I
presume) one of my roommates bought. I used a very similar antenna before,
with a low pass filter, then took it down and used the wire for something
else. The roommate bought the speakers, and then I later put up a very
similar antenna, lengthwise (both were from insulated speaker wire). On SSB
on another commercial rig, the speakers were almost acting like a PA system.
The end of the wire is on the other side of the wall opposite one of the
speakers and the receiver, maybe that's the problem. I never noticed the
problems before the speakers arrived, when using 5W on another rig.
Connected to a dummy load, I do not get a HI CUR message at 5W. When I
crank up the power to 15W, I get the HI CUR message at first, then it goes
away. My K2 has the HI CUR setting at 2.5 amps (default). Maybe I'll try
again with a higher value as suggested. I was getting the HI CUR message
most of the time when hooked up to a yagi at my club's station. I'm not
sure what the SWR of that antenna is, tho I wouldn't be surprised if it's
over 1.5:1. I set the power there to 5W, and hit my CQ message and was
getting HI CUR a lot of the time.
In the receive pre-alignment, I'm pretty sure I found a peak on each of the
bands. I'll try this again soon and record what happens. In the
transmitter alignment part, however, I did notice the power output
increasing a lot with L9 on 30m and C23 on 20m, so much so that it went to a
HI CUR warning. Most of the time for the other bands, output would increase
to maybe 2.3W on the peak. I tried turning off TUNE when this happened, but
the problem repeated every time.
As for the voltage drop when tuning... when I set my K2 at 5W, here's the
receiving voltage and current: 13.4V, .24A. When tuning, this changes to
12.8V, 1.66A. The amps slowly start to rise, and after about 10 seconds or
so, it's reading 12.8V, 1.78A. There's a really fat power cord (I think
it's 10 AWG) from the power supply to a RigRunner, but a 22 AWG cord from
that to the K2... I'll try that again with 16 AWG or bigger next time.
Thanks for all the help.
_______________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Post to: [email protected]
You must be a subscriber to post to the list.
Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.):
http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm
Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
