The poor man's antenna tuner

The above suggests a quick and easy answer to the problem of poor loading on any one band. One solution is to buy an antenna tuner. The cheap and dirty solution is to vary your feedline length until you obtain maximum transmitter output. Purists may frown on this scheme, but it is a case of making the prevailing situation work for you and not against you. I made up a selection of short coax lengths with PL259s on each end and splice them in and out of the main transmission line for optimum loading as the occasion demands. The lengths are 1,2,4,and 6 feet, These four cables solved all my loading problems at 40 meters and above.
And now  we have two helpful pieces of information at hand. First, the transceiver protection circuit may have a different shut-down response on one band than it does on another band. Second, the shut-down response is a function of both SWR and the reactance of the load the transmitter 'sees'. By juggling coax line length, I can find a particular value of load reactance that provides me with the greatest possible output power for a given value of SWR. In effect I am moving along the transmission line, finding the 'sweet spot' that permits the highest level of power output. The 'sweet spot' on the transmission line obviously changes from band to band. That is, a different line length may be optimum for different bands. That will have to be determined by experiment. With a little luck you will find a line length that will provide satisfactory power output on your favourite bands. Forget about the SWR meter. Just go for the maximum power output under your normal operating conditions. It is amazing what a few feet of coax will accomplish!