Hi Al,?
Thanks for your post. The jumping of swr up to 1.8 is not a good indication btw. I would do some investigation on that 80m antenna or connection. This amp seems solid for the most part and i am hopeful that all of this will be resolved somehow. Hoping all the quirks will eventually be looked at and fixed as time passes. Narrowing down the issues can be difficult for sure. In my experience so far with this amp, i have gone from 50% to 99% reliable. Soldering all connectors and ensuring good connectivity and cabling has been important. And the most crucial component of all this was the serial cable going to the radio. Rf detection was way too hokey for my liking. Just by eliminating the rf detection and going direct to radio improved reliability by 40%. I can live with 99% but sure wish someone could let me know why its only going into bypass on cw. Ftdx5000. No full break in and happens while sending cw without breaking the ptt.?
If more people let Palstar know of these issues, the more importance will be placed on them resolving it. Ignoring the issue doesnt get anything done. I also might add, if it wasnt for contesting (where alot of tx per minutes are made) i would say my amp had no issues. Contests push my gear to its limits. And thats not a bad thing.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On Jul 12, 2020, at 11:17 AM, Al Womelsdorf via groups.io <ahw609@...> wrote:
?Interesting. I am also having the same bypass issue, but only when I am using fldigi to send some message. 80m is the worst example, and is totally useless. In addition I am using the HF-AUTO tuner, which is always showing an SWR in the range 1.05 to 1.1, and the amp is showing SWR in the range of 1.2 to 1.3 when things are working correctly, but it does jump up to 1.8 and then instantly goes into bypass mode. Major PITA. Discussions with Mark did not elicit any comments about this being a known problem, basically stated it had something to do with my antenna, but I could always send the units in to be checked out. Also I tried adding a Palomar (?) choke balun to see if that helped (I already have a loop of coax at the antenna and many beads at both ends) and that made no difference other than to increase my normal SWR about .02 or so. Tried skipping the HF-AUTO and my antenna is natively about 1.6, and it still kicks out.
Sadly I have stopped recommending this equipment to others because of this issue. They are good units, and as this group has shown they are not the only ones that do this, but denying the problem will not help get things solved. SSB works fine here with no issues of this nature. Also my local HRO has sold the identical equipment (2 set-ups!) to another ham, and he has no problems, but I am not sure if he is doing any digital modes.
Al? KD2PNR
