Re: [Elecraft] K3S, N1MM and DTR/RTS to send CW
Welcome to the same issue I have had since last August. If you hook up the radio to a powered PC or laptop USB jack, does the problem go away? On K3S 10176 it does. Still setting PTT-KEY to anything but OFF-OFF with USB disconnected should not light the TX front panel lamp or go full power key down. 73, Bob Rennard - N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Elecraft] With the K4 coming, is it time to replace this email list with a forum?
I agree with Dave that we should start putting the Elecraft product model as the first token in the mail header; e,g, K4, and stop lazily recycling a prior header with a totally different topic in the body. Of course, worse yet is somebody responding to a digest such that we get the entirety of the digest the reflector sent to him. As Bill Nye, the science guy, said recently, “Common sense is not all that common”. One thing I like about groups.io which currently has a K4 forum, is that it allows using hash tags as the first part of the topic line so that I can filter out topics that do not interest me. In the case of my local radio club, I use a #DMR filter, and they make me apply a #HF hash tag. Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
[Elecraft] FS K3-100
K3 100 watt transceiver #0734 with ATU, 400 Hz 8 Pole Filter for CW, 2700 Hz 5 pole filter for SSB & digital; 6 foot red/black power lead with PowerPole connector. NO sub-receiver, NO DVK, NO general coverage module, NO transverter, NO KUSB cable, NO microphone Factory serviced for low noise synthesizer upgrade, updated DSP, latest transverter interface with preamp 2 for 6-12 meters, lower noise TCXO, Gold pins and many other updates. Extensive details and pictures on QRZ swap meet. Always operated within a non-smoking, air conditioned environment; never operated mobile or in a field day tent. Very clean inside and out. Never failed me in 10 years! Asking $1432 plus shipping USA only. Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Elecraft] K4 in production
Six weeks ago, my 100 years old Grandmother’s dryer broke down. My bride and I went to Lowes to see what we could find that would be simple to operate, and did the same at the local Home Depot. Grandmother is about 1230 miles from us. One thing we noticed that was common to all the models in both the big box stores was a taped on paper sign reading BACK ORDERED. We had little success trying to get one from either big box website, but did finally get an order placed for delivery a month ago. Grandmother got the new dryer about two weeks ago. Delay after delay. I think we should realize that a lot of changes have to be made for a company to comply with the guidelines and ensure employee safety: workspace spittle shields, ingress body temperature checks, PPE such as masks and gloves, and the 20 questions that should be asked every Monday regarding what employees did over the weekend. Not only does Elecraft want to ship products and complete repairs in a timely manner, they also want to avoid jeopardizing employee health. We too should want Elecraft to meet these objectives, particularly the latter. I continue to see the video of some woman ranting about her right to not wear a mask. She is evidently completely clueless about how SARS-CoV-2 spreads. So, you can mock me for wearing a mask, but I hope you won’t have to mourn me because someone else did not wear theirs. Maybe being jailed for involuntary manslaughter would wake up the public who think COVID is a hoax. Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Elecraft] Upgrading the Shack
FedEx – Put a failed delivery sticker on the gate an eighth of a mile from our porch. Claimed they did so the next 2 days, but they did not. When I called they told me to pick up the item 30 miles away in another town. Asked them to deliver to our town which they agreed to do and claimed it would be at FedEx Office before Noon. I went there and the clerk laughed and told me it might be Noon in Hawaii when they got it. UPS Does not ring the intercom bell at the roadside gate, leaves the parcel in a large plastic bag which flaps in the wind to alert the poachers. If I leave the gate open, they bring the parcel onto the porch, do not ring the doorbell, and do not put the parcel in a protective bag. USPS Sent a cashiers check for $1500 by Priority Mail to get a soil characteristics report done for inspection by the county engineer before erecting a tower. The soils engineer drilled a 25 foot deep test hole, created a report, and billed me for the $1500. When asked, they said they’d never seen the check, they called USPS who said it was delivered to their office on Saturday to which they replied that the multi-tenant building was locked, They asked USPS to find out what happened and the USPS response was that the delivery carrier was no longer in their employ. DHL Shipped some electronics from San Jose to San Diego overnight. DHL claimed that the forest fire forbid them making the delivery. When I asked them how far away the fire was from the downtown recipient, they went more stupid. Good luck Bob R = n7wy __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
[Elecraft] K3 Accessory Y Cable
I tried a search on Elecraft.com for the E980190 cable described on page 38 of the KPA1500 revision B manual. No results found… Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Elecraft] Copy cat - no way
I noticed that the IC-705 drawing shows an ATU connector presumably for linking to an external ATU. Maybe the intended market is not SOTA, portable, Field Day, or anything outdoors. Perhaps a paddle is in the accessories we have not seen yet. Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Elecraft] Elecraft K4 and Accessibility
I note that Harry went from Elecraft to Japanese radios, Flex and Anan. I presume he means the Flex M radios and the newly released Mk 2 Anan which do have knobs while the predecessors do not. I thought about my recent usage of my K3. After pressing the power button, I set the output power to drive my alpha amp, and while operating adjusted the audio level control and infrequently the audio passband filter, turned on XIT 20 Hz low when pouncing or used RIT when running, rarely touched high and low cut, and used the VFO. Using N1MM I am able to tune the radio, change bands, adjust the keyer speed, clear the RIT and toggle it on and off, and even spot tune a CW signal. I like the organization of the knobs and buttons that it does have. Those that are dual function do not confuse me at all. I do not find the buttons too small and they are definitely not too cluttered. I operate portable a lot in the summer. The compact size and light weight are a plus. I am older than Rick T. You commented about the 6700’s place on the Sherwood tables. Yes, it is in second place for 2 KHz offset dynamic range, but not for 20 KHz offset. Oh, did you read footnote “y” ? Watsonville, I am ready to play K4 music. Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Re: [Elecraft] Sensitivity - Was K4 Observations
Regarding W0YK/Ed’s comment – The 8-ary FSK of FT-8 may be buried in the ambient noise at my/your/somebody’s QTH. Like LPI communications, knowing where to look in frequency and time allows the decoder to combine noisy samples and recover the original; in the case of FT-8, a 63 bit message. Your receiver does not hear the 63 bits, just the symbols used in statistically recreating the 63 bits. The real issue with sensitivity or receiver NF is making sure that the receiver is a weak contributor to the overall noise power entering the detection process which is generally dominated by ambient noise. Most of the radios in the top Sherwood top 10 are weak contributors in most locations, even in the CCIR-defined quiet rural environments. 73 Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Re: [Elecraft] K3 and WIN10
I believe that putting WIN10 hardware in the radio will be a benefit to the OEM. It will make the radio become obsolete faster and allow more sales for upgrades. Maestro, SunSDR, and Anan MK II radios all have Win10 PCs embedded. Those radios’ embedded PCs are all obsolete already. Consider how much pain it is to deal with Windows 10 updates. I am sure the radio OEMs are paranoid, or at least I would be were I one of them. When you have a widely deployed product that suddenly stops working because of an update, the pain is intense and expensive to cure. How about an Intel NUC instead of a PC ? They were used on Heard and Ducie rather than using laptops. Even NUCs do not support IPA 4K monitors, yet. Bob R __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Re: [Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset
As NW8L pointed out, there are simple updates to restore proper date displays in GPS receivers. An update should have a release date inside the build with the associated GPS week number when it was released. With a little coding, this will allow the receiver to display date properly for 1024 weeks following the release date. Another design peril is the Age of Data counters for almanac and ephemeris data which are 9 bits. A company from Illinois thought they could get by with an 8-bit byte, but in July 2004, a whole bunch of their mobile phones went screen of death at the transition from week 255 to week 256. Somebody commented that WAAS in HI was not as good in the ConUS. I wonder where this came from. I cannot imagine the FAA would put up with this unless it is just too easy to land a plane in HI. In 2017 the GPS guys at Los Angeles AFB were indicating 40 cm repeatability, around 1.3 nanoseconds without WAAS. Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
[Elecraft] TRS connectors - Heil Foster adapter
Chuck, KE9UW wrote = // You cannot use Heil's adapter for the front panel Foster 8 pin connector on the K3s because they short the ring to the sleeve for some unknown reason. So in order to use the K3s front panel 8pin Foster socket, you need to make your own Foster to stereo mini phone connector adapter. Only two connections and DX Engineering has an excellent Foster plug. Ignore the reference to Heil Replacement Part, it's just the same old Foster 8 pin plug for all mics and rigs. // The PC standard is for electret bias to be supplied to the tip and ring of a tip, ring, shield (TRS) connector with audio from the microphone entering the PC on the tip. The around 8 vdc bias is to be supplied via isolating TWO resistors, one to the tip and one to the ring. Low budget USB soundcard adapters use ONE resistor supplying bias voltage to both the tip and ring which are thus shorted together within the adapter. My Heil ProSet 3.5 mm microphone plug has no ring, just an extended sleeve. So, essentially the Heil microphone plug has the ring and shield shorted together, and the cheap USB adapter shorts the tip and ring, so inserting a Heil microphone plug results in the tip, ring and shield all being shorted together. The microphone would get no electret bias, and the audio it can’t produce is shorted to ground, too. On the other hand, good PC soundcards use TWO resistors and the Heil ProSet works fine with them! I believe in trust but verify. Chuck is correct, plugging a TRS aka stereo jumper cable into the 3.5 mm microphone jack on my K2/K3 Heil adapter and checking things with my Fluke DVM reveals that somewhere in the adapter the ring and shield are shorted together; maybe in the way things are wired, may be in the Foster plug. Continuing, with the K3 MIC-SEL sent to RPL-BIAS, at the rear-panel connector relative to the shield there is 7 VDC of bias applied to the tip, and the ring seems to float. With power OFF, the resistance between tip and shield was about 4.5 megohms and between the ring and shield even higher. Thanks Chuck, I learned something. It was a good day. Bob R – N7WY __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Elecraft] Auto-spot, tuning aids, and the arcane history of CW pitch-matching
For N1MM, use the up and down arrow keys to get close in S operation and then
press F11 to zero beat -
F11 Z B,{CATA1ASC SWT42;}
If it is a dense pile, a little XIT offset is a big help.
73,
Bob R
__
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net
This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Elecraft] KPA1500 not amplifying
Eric et al - I performed the wattmeter calibration from page 52 of the user manual, and then did the 5 and 50 watt TX gain calibration using the K3(s) Utility. I notice that during the first transmission of AFSK RTTY into a Palstar dummy load, the KPA1500 output power grows to the desired output level in a few seconds, but in subsequent transmissions, the power level immediately reaches the desired level. Unfortunately, I did not have the LP-100 between the K3s and the amp. I've been using the KPA1500 with my K3 using KEY line instead of the KPAK cable, but not on RTTY and do not see this ramp up. 73, Bob R - KPA1500 #67 On 2018-10-24 19:44, Eric Swartz - WA6HHQ, Elecraft wrote: Hi Bob - Have you run the K3 TX gain calibration on each band into a dummy load (or very low SWR Ant.) ? If that is out of cal, it could easily create symptoms like this. 73, Eric /elecraft.com/ On 10/22/2018 2:02 PM, n7wy via Elecraft wrote: Turns out, it is not the KPA1500 not amplifying, but rather the KPA3A final amplifier stage in my K3S is acting like it has tubes, not FETs. It has to warm up at 30 watts out, and then the power can be reduced to 20 watts. Weirdly, changing the power level above 20 watts seems to reset tbe behavior so it has to be warmed again. The KPA3A module that is present is the 2nd replacement/exchange. The first 2 had high 2 tone IMD issues on SSB. My trustworthy K3 is now driving tbe KPA1500 without issues. Thanks for all the off reflector counsel and 73, Bob R n7wy __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Elecraft] Atomic Clocks and Aluminum Siding
Why not just use a cheap GPS receiver instead of a WWVB receiver. It should work anywhere in the world, and give time keeping accuracy better than 1 microsecond relative to UTC. Most of the time location accuracy is around 10-30 meters, so equivalently the time error at a GPS receiver is 35 to 105 nanoseconds or so relative to GPS time that is maintained to within 100 nanoseconds of UTC. If you want to see the past week's relative error, try http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/gpstt.html. The Sprint PCS and Verizon networks, and probably others, are synchronized to GPS as well, but I have no source for the time keeping accuracy produced by your connected wireless phone. Bob Rennard, N7WY USAF GPS Program Office class of 1978 - Original Message - From: David A. Belsley [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Elecraft Reflector elecraft@mailman.qth.net Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 8:03 PM Subject: [Elecraft] Atomic Clocks and Aluminum Siding Atomic Clocks are great additions to the shack. But how, pray tell, does one get them to work inside a house with aluminum siding when you can't put it next to a window? I believe WWVB is on 80KHz, which is pretty low. Can one couple them to an antenna? thanks, dave belsley, w1euy ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
