Elecraft K60XV Manual - Manual (Page 16)

16
Using the K60XV
Note: If you remove the K60XV, you'll need to reconnect the RF path on the K2 RF board in two places:
(1) insert a 4.7-pF capacitor into pins 1 and 3 of J15; (2) insert a jumper between pins 3 and 5 of J13. Leave
all RF board components you installed in place, and leave the D 1 9 menu entry set to Y . The 60-m band
and low-power transverter I/O will no longer be available, but the K2 should otherwise function normally.
60 Meter Operation
Before proceeding, you should become familiar with the 60-meter regulations in your country or
region. Detailed information is available for the following entities (check our web site for others):
U.S.: http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/regulations/faq-60.html
United Kingdom: http://www.rsgb-hfc.org.uk/operating%20procedures.htm
Enabling 60 meters: To use the K60XV on 60 meters, D 1 9 must be set to Y , and the associated
hardware changes must be in place (C71 = 120 pF; R29, D19, and D20 installed).
U.S. 60-meter frequencies: The 60-meter U.S. amateur allocation provides five fixed-frequency, USB-
only channels with a width of 2.8 kHz. The FCC specifies the frequencies as having channel centers of
5332, 5348, 5368, 5373, and 5405 kHz. Since the only allowed operating mode is USB, this corresponds to
ham transceiver VFO frequencies of 5330.5, 5346.5, 5366.5, 5371.5, and 5403.5 kHz. The K2 can be set up
to channel-hop among these frequencies as explained on the next page. Note: 5403.5 kHz is available in
both the U.S. and U.K. 5371.5 kHz is used by the HF Pack group (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hfpack/) .
U.S. power limit: The maximum power output on 60 meters is the amount that, with a given antenna,
would be equivalent to 50 W into a dipole. The ARRL and other sources provide additional guidelines.
ATU Use on 60 Meters (KAT2, KAT100): If your regulations allow brief CW transmission on 60 meters,
you'll be able to use our KAT2 or KAT100 ATUs on this band (you'll need KAT2 firmware revision 1.07,
or KAT100 revision 1.05). Both tuners will match nearly any antenna on this band, can function with as
little as 0.5 watts, and save their matching parameters in nonvolatile memory for instant recall on band
change. Since 60 meters is a relatively narrow band, you will in most cases only need to tune a given
antenna up once, near the middle of your allocation.
Resonant antennas, and getting by without an ATU: CW operation is not permitted on 60 meters in the
U.S. This presents a problem for automatic antenna tuners, which require either a carrier or a sustained
voice signal, such as a whistle, in order to do antenna matching. (In SSB mode, a whistle is essentially a
carrier
1 .) To get around this, you could put up a resonant antenna, or use a manual tuner in conjunction with
an antenna analyzer. If an ATU will still be left in-line, you can either set it for bypass mode, or pre-tune it
into a dummy load on 60 meters.
1
The KAT2 and KAT100 use the carrier method, which is faster and more reliable than whistling.
Whistling may also be frowned upon by some users of the band.