I went down to the shack the other night to spend some quality time with the K2; only to find that my newly installed KAT2 would no longer tune up my G5RV in all instances. I got good matches on 80 and 40 Meters; but on any other band, the best match I could get was about 3.5 to 1.
I just installed the tuner last week; and it was working fine. This was definitely a disappointing development. Since it previously had worked, it seemed reasonable that I hadn't built anything altogether wrong. I decided that the beat course of action would be an SWR recalibration. Maybe that would point me in the right direction.
I followed the manual and got all the correct voltage readings. I got to the point of actually redoing the SWR calibration. I got great readings on 40 meters and 80 meters; but then I noticed someting very odd. When I would go to the other bands, I would get a good SWR reading; but then the display would go from reading SWR to power out. It's not supposed to do that!!!!!!
I figured that maybe I had a bad solder joint; or maybe I hadn't installed the microprocessor well enough. I was going to un-install the KAT2 when I found it! One of the two connections on the plug for the RF connection on the K2's main circuit board had come out of its plastic housing.
I undid the connection from the main board and this time, pressed the connection point into its housing really, really well. I plugged the 2 pin RF connector back into the K2 and fired it up again to find that this had indeed been the problem.
A quick run through all the bands revealed the KAT2 was matching the G5RV on all bands with an SWR of no worse than 1.4 to 1 in any case.
It's nice to be able to troubleshoot and repair your gear yourself.
73 de Larry W2LJ
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