Nothing big, but I did notice that the KPA-500 had a noticeably warm cabinet when turned “Off” using the button on the front. It turns out when in this mode the amp pulls about 11.5 watts of power. So the real on/off switch on the back needs to be used to totally remove power — otherwise about 100KWh per year will go to heating the cabinet.
The other thing is despite setting my tap to the recommended setting I was having a 20 volt HV drop, below the level recommended by Elecraft. Despite being a newer manual an older errata sheet didn’t get published. The new minimum HV voltage is now 60 volts at full power. At no point should it be allowed to go over 90 volts, which is the new trip point.
Don’t miss using the Elecraft KPA Utility. It has a feature that allows you to set the Power-On Banner (the text that is shown on the screen for the first five seconds after a power up) to any 8-character value. Surprisingly, mine now says “WB4SON”.
Finally, I’m happy to report that I’ve used it at full power on 40/30/20/15 and 10 meters. I just need to try it on out 160/80/17/12 to be sure it works everywhere (and I don’t have any RFI issues as a result of higher power).
