This morning I got up and turned on the K3. I was shocked to find RFI from my Eveready flashlight on 7040, a birdie on 7160.1850192827354637, and with the noise blanker on I could hear splatter from my nextdoor neighbor's kilowatt at the bottom of the band. So I decided to update the firmware.
The K3 locked up during the update. I had to power cycle everything four times. After the update, I could swear that the AFX started acting differently than before the update. Somebody told me it was my AGC settings. I started to try to measure the AGC response when I noticed that my filters were shifted and tilted. I phoned Inrad and exchanged my filters ten or eleven times until I got one that was flat with zero frequency shift. Something was still bothering me, so I hooked up my spectrum analyzer. Aha! Audio artifacts! These were solved easily by purchasing a pair of $9.95 headphones at Pic 'n' Save. While troubleshooting this, I happened to notice that my RS232-to-USB-to-waveguide-to-banana plugs-to-RS232 adapter was acting up. A search of the archives told me that the driver and the chips used in this adapter were the wrong kind. Why in the world can't the K3 have an X-band horn in the back instead of that antiquated serial connector? When I tried to transmit, the guys on the net complained about the K3's key clicks, and its ATU wouldn't tune my 0.1 -j 4570 ohm antenna impedance properly. However, when I boosted the lower two TX EQ bands by +16 dB these problems seemed to go away. Well, that, and re-writing the K3's firmware to implement a windowing function that takes 2 GB of external memory to implement. With some of this extra memory I wrote a Yaesu receiver personality that makes my K3 distort exactly like my old FT-757. It's just like having that rig back in the shack. During this testing, I did have some trouble with FSK-D VOX without QSK in DATA-A Dual PB AFX BIN TEXT DEC NR 1-4 mode, but switching to AFSK with APF, PTT DVR N1MM through the soundcard with DTR always on and CONFIG:MON turned down seemed to help. However, I plan to ask Wayne for a high-priority firmware update to do this automatically. (By the way, it's a good thing I have this short call sign... I can say my call 15 times in one ten second DVR memory! Thank goodness for the vanity call sign system.) I *think* everything's okay now except for there's still something wrong with the receiver which I can't quite pinpoint, and I know it couldn't possibly be related to all of those years touring with The Who and standing in front of their amplifiers night after night. Happy Holidays, Al W6LX ______________________________________________________________ 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
