Take a look at MAIN menu option MIC SEL....believe you need to select HI mic
gain range by tapping "1" to toggle between LO and HI mic gain.
When I used a Heil HC4 element on my K3 I needed to use the HI mic gain setting
to get good audio out with good RF output.....give it a try.
The Heil HC4 element (dynamic not electret) at the HI mic gain setting worked
FB in my K3.
73, Joe W2KJ
I QRP, therefor I am
> Hi
>
> We are the proud owners of 6 K3/100 used at the FY5KE contest station.
> These radios has been delivered around mid-2008 and their serial numbers
> are in the 012xx range.
>
> After using mostly these rigs for SSB contesting in FY5KE or in other
> places, we are still facing a lack of "dynamics", "punch",
> "penetration", "power", whatever you call it. In other words, when
> comparing this rig to our radios we previously used (TS-850), with the
> same microphone (Heil HC-4 element) and the same output RF power, the K3
> is clearly way behind in term of "average power" we can read on the Bird
> wattmeter wired on its RF output. Even if observing the wattmeter needle
> is not a very scientific measurement (we admit it), various comparative
> reports on the air do confirm our feeling.
>
> We spent time on various available settings (mic gain, compressor level,
> etc), with no luck, excepted a very distorted and awful audio to roughly
> reach the same level, which is not acceptable.
>
> After a little Googling, it appears that other contesters suffers the
> same issue (e.g. www.bavarian-contest-club.de/projects/K3_english.pdf
> pages 6 and 10).
>
> Some questions :
>
> - Do other contesters (or not) here have noted the same problem ?
> - What settings did you modified (or not) to achieve a good result ?
> - Is there any possible HW or SW upgrade we aren't aware of, that could
> help us ?
>
> We must confess we are currently preparing our next contest season, and
> we are seriously considering reselling these radios and bring others
> Japanese models if we can't solve this problem, despite we really
> appreciate them in many other aspects (size, weight, etc.).
>
> 73
>
> For the FY5KE/Win-Test team,
>
> Larry - F6FVY
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