Tonight I have tried to use the FT-817 remote cable that I bought together with the T1. First, I wanted to find the leaked RF info signals sent by the T1. According to the manual, there should be at least one signal on every ham band and I found one around 7024 kHz.
The signal was rather strong but below S0 (I have disconnected the antenna). Later I found out, the these leak signals are also present if the yellow LED blinks because of something else. This is no problem, however, because no LEDs blink during normal operation; the T1 turns itself OFF after three seconds of inactivity.
After having listened to the nice CW from the T1 I continued to play with the remote cable. I changed bands on the FT-817, which caused an almost immediate reaction from the T1 side. Although the T1 recalls the last stored setting for that band it is possible to initiate a retune. All you have to do is start to transmit while the green LED blinks for about three seconds after the band change has been detected by the T1 (there is a small delay of few 100 milliseconds between band change and when the T1 starts doing something).
Needless to say, if the T1 is in bypass mode, no tuning will be initiated but you can still get a power/swr reading as long as the LED blinks.
I have also made an accidental test of the tuning with a non-constant carrier. So far I have been using a CW signal to tune but this time my finger slipped and the transmission stopped. At the same time, the T1 stopped tuning but resumed it’s work as soon as I started to transmit again. There is, of course, the magical three seconds after which the T1 powers itself off.
This, I’m afraid, concludes the tests for a while. I have many other plans for the rest of the year and I believe now that my T1 works as specified. I will try to test the T1 with some wire antennas as well but probably not before the Christmas 2005. So, it will be something like, how well does the T1 match a wire antenna in -10 deg celsius.