KW Matchbox coax fed ant connection

[K6JEK]

How should a KW matchbox be connected to a coax fed antenna? The manual says, of course, use the coax connection but the previous owner had gone to some trouble to connect the RG-213 to the balanced feed line connections. He wasn't just being lazy. The feed line has a PL-259 which he connected through a barrel to a short piece of RG-213 with giant lugs on it, those connected to the big insulators.

Looking at the schematic, I can tell it's not the same even when the one balanced connection is grounded as the manual says it should be on 80, 40, and 20.

Rather than just assume the last guy was off his rocker, I'm wondering if this makes some kind of sense. Does it make sense to any of you?

(Antenna is a coax fed 75M, low flying dipole, only half in the air at present)

Jon

[WD8KDG]

Jon,

Interesting...……..verley, verley, interesting

A couple thoughts come to mind. First, EF Johnson engineers kinda knew what they were doing. We all know reading the manual isn't the manly thing to do, but give it a try. Walt, W2DU had a few words to say pertaining to the Matchboxes and past history seems to state they don't have a large matching range. Add the link coupling...……….hard to beat.

I'd connect the antenna through the Flashbox to a good antenna analyzer, tweak the knobs for a match, then note the return loss. What setup gives good numbers? Try it.

Murphy is always hiding somewhere: Just because it works in my backyard doesn't mean it will work in your backyard.

Craig,