Hmmm interesting Scott; don't hold me to this but your loop may be
just a wee bit too small. If you could add another 70 feet to it and
get it up to 0.8 wave for 160 then maybe the palstar could handle it
if the components have the range. I have a friend who runs a BT1500
on 160 at 1.5 kw but his loop is around 500 feet long. I'm planning
on getting one of those MFJ balanced RF amp meters too.
To the fellow with the AT5K, yes, the AT line of Palstars are
unbalanced--read Kirk Kleinschmidt's QST article A Balanced Every Day
Approach to All-Band Bliss on how all his problems with RFI etc went
away when he switched from an unbalanced tuner to a true balanced one
(two parallel variable Ls and one or two variable caps across them)
for feeding his window line and loop. The article chronicles his
migration from a horiz. loop fed with coax and a SGC smart tuner and
balun on the high Z side to window line, balanced tuner and a 1:1 unun
on the low Z 50 ohm side.
The unbalanced tuner mfr's are crafty--they may say something like "my
tuner will work with a balanced feedline" which is true depending on
how you define "work" but they won't say "my tuner is balanced" which
is what you need.
73
rob / k5uj
<<<Not intending to be repetitive, but I also have a BT1500A and
concur it is an
excellent, well built tuner. I use it with a 350 ft. horizontal loop fed with
600 ohm parallel line. Works fine on 80 throught 10 meters. It does not work
well on 160. I also use a MFJ in-line balanced RF ammeter, and it sure is nice
to see equal readings on each leg of the line when tuning the antenna with the
BT1500A.
Scott K4VWK>>>
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