On 1/29/2014 7:38 PM, Michael Marx wrote:
Thanks in a advance for any enlightenment anyone can give me
I've never seen a Centurion up close, but I own three Titan 425s and a Herc II, all of which I've used with the K3 (also K2, FT1000MP, and TS850). All combinations work fine, and I've done the hookup like you have, but it means that you can't use the rig's internal keyer.
So, I tried the standard hookup rather than Ten Tec's -- Key Out of the K3 drives PTT of the amp. This works fine, because all of these rigs have a delay in the range of 8 msec from when the Key Out signal keys the amp before RF is sent. This gives the T/R relay in the amp plenty of time to pull in, so no problem. There's a limit, though, on sending speed at which CW starts to get "choppy," as those 8 msec delays are subtracted from each dit and dah.
In my contesting experience, I start getting complaints at about 28 WPM, and I like to contest faster than that. The other factor is that more than once, I've had to stop in the middle of a contest because the vacuum relay in the amp was wearing out from too many cycles from QSK contesting. So -- I now do all of my high power contesting without QSK. Not ideal, and I really appreciate being able to run full QSK with the KPA500.
73, Jim K9YC ______________________________________________________________ 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
