Questions: I may be looking for something that's right under my nose, but I've been digging and can't find it...
***>>> Is there a way in the various outputs to tell whether the radio is transmitting on ANT1 or ANT2. This is an need that is developing out of my very successful use of diversity on 40 through 15 during the IOTA contest out on North Carolina's Core Banks. I am in the process of adding switching to listen in diversity on two transmitting antennas on 40-10, in addition to the more common diversity on two different receive antennas on 80 and 160. During IOTA, the ANT switch put the transmitting antenna of a right angle pair of identical antennas in the left ear, and it was a very easy concept to manage, which others in the group picked up instantly. At home and facing dissimilar antennas and amplifiers I would need the ANT1/ANT2 state exported to throw switches. ***>>> A second question regards where one might place a BNC jack that has the "other" ant RX out jack brought out to the back panel instead of routed directly to the KRX3. Is there a newer back panel that would support this? Explanation: If one is using diversity for 160 through 10 and has to switch between diverse RX antennas on low bands to listening diversely on TX antennas, the switching choice that now is made at kit build time will have to be made and then unmade as band changes progress during the contest. I know, I know, what planet have you been on, but it WORKED very nicely on Core Banks, particularly on 40 meters. I'm sure many of you have heard that very fast QSB later in the evening on 40 meters that can clip dits out characters and change dahs into dits. After listening to it all night in the IOTA I am 99% positive that it is caused by rotating polarization, and the drop is when the rotation invokes that 30 dB cross-polarization at 90 degrees off the SINGLE antenna polarization in use at the station. The rotation was commonly around 10-20 seconds but varied wildly and was NOT at the same frequency or angle of rotation on different incoming signals. Simply toggling out of and into diversity mode would respectively toggle between: 1) aforementioned deep QSB, particularly bad on weaker signals with low antennas, and all weak signals in the pileup coming from the center of the headset. and 2) hearing the same signal rotate from one ear to another, most of the time without much of a dip, if the audio in BOTH ears is used for evaluation. The rotation effect for weak signals calling in a pileup (we were a rare mult), would frequently spread out calling signals left to right in the headset. Different weak signals were not uniform in their cycle phase or timing. It was notable that this effect was missing from LOUD signals from either EU or US, which tended to be in ONE EAR OR THE OTHER, not both. USA in the SW-NE wire and EU in the SE-NW wire. On high angle signals on 20 and 40 the separation would be not so much direction incoming as polarization in reception. The antenna was an identical pair of 28' on a side inverted vee doublets supported in the center on a 40' push up pole, carefully pulled out at right angles and fed with two 450 lines to a pair of 4:1 voltage baluns right at the K3, and using the internal tuner. The obvious mismatch to the KRX3 was worried about but did not seem to affect reception in any discernable way. Also the misc power in the not-transmitting antenna while the other was transmitting never once operated the COR. We had taken pains toward this in the erection of the antenna. I doubt the low levels would have been true if we had been operating amps instead of barefoot. 73, Guy ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
