Guys,

Put this in the K3. Some questions. Would appreciate some enlightenment from the experts out there.

It has only three pins which I suppose are +V, ground and signal out.

What does changing REF CAL do since there is no "adjustment" pin?

Also I expected to only have to tweak a well calibrated K3's REF CAL a small bit after installing the TCXO. Not! REF CAL had to change by 536 to zero beat WWV on 10 MHz. Not found any goofy settings that would explain that.

Have no way of knowing the internal unit XTAL temp. So I looked at the front panel temp vs frequency change for the first hour of warm up. There seems to be little temperature compensation between 19 and 30C while there is measurable drift. Alternatively the compensation routines do as good as they can (and much better than the uncompensated stock oscillator) over this range. Compensation appears good after 30C up to the 35-36C temps reached after 8 hours. This may be a meaningless observation. Perhaps the internal KTCX03 electronics temps have stabilized by then.

Another perhaps meaningless observation. Again using the front panel temp as an indicator. The unit exhibits a positive temperature coefficient for the first hour and then becomes negative. The stock oscillator has a negative coefficient.

It appears to work as advertised. For normal use temperature transients, it easily makes the +/- 0.5 ppm spec -- overkill for most everybody. I have some 8 hour long plots of this and the standard oscillator warmup drift if anybody is interested in the nits.

A literature search on TXCO compensation methods uncovers something interesting. A neural network approach gets the drift down to 0.005 ppm. It learns how to compensate as it goes.

I wish REF CAL had one more significant digit. The last REF CAL digit amounts to 0.5 Hz per REF CAL unit at 10 MHz.

The K3 is more than a rig, in many areas it approaches a lab instrument.
I use it as such often.

What are your experiences?

73 de Brian/K3KO


-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2012.0.2241 / Virus Database: 3162/5798 - Release Date: 05/04/13

______________________________________________________________
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

Reply via email to