Ok....so while at Dayton I purchased a 20W foldable solar panel with
an Anderson Power Pole connector. Today was the first day I got to
test it out at the park and as advertised it needed absolutely no time
to start sending electrons to the radio....no warm up time needed.
The operating voltage is advertised at 15.4 volts. When I powered on
the KX3 it was on 10 seconds or so and gave me a warning that the
input was >16 volts and the KX3 then shut down to protect itself.
Ok...so it has 4 rows of panels....I folded one under and bam....it
gave me a >16 vots of input and shut down again....so I covered up
another row and it wouldn't come on....I covered up one of the squares
and had a nice 13 volts input and it operated fine. Sending at 10
watts and the reports on the other end on 17 meters were, "You sound
like you always do"...which locally means good...but still lost in the
dog piles of a DX.
So...this thing is putting out more power than it is supposed
to...which is a good surprise...and watching the KX3 screen the
voltage seemed stable throughout SSB at 10 watts...I'd like to test
that out on JT65 but I left the laptop at home and I didn't have any
memories set for a long CQ on RTTY and didn't have the CW key either
for input.
So, anyone have a suggestion on an inline voltage regulator...say just
Anderson Power Poles on both ends and a potentiometer to let me dial
down to the desired input voltage? It would be nice to have a digital
screen but not necessary since I should be able to read the voltages
on the KX3 screen. The lighter the weight the better. The whole
point of the light weight fold-able solar panel was for back packing
to a summit and staying there for a while and leaving the batteries
behind.
Thanks for any help and suggestions
Lee Stephens
KK4JSJ
KX3 #3462
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