I probably should have expected this and took action before anyone had to mention it.
I was using a KX3 on internal battery. I was running PSK-31 using DATA-A at 3 watts. I use an external soundcard (ASUS Xonar U7) and the laptop is an HP Spectre running Win10 and DXLab suite. Rig control and the sound card run off a USB hub. Antenna is a 160 meter OCF and I was on 40 meters. The last QSO was with Eric KB3CNK. He's a few hundred miles from me. He reported my signal was strong but that he saw some harmonics or splatter on his waterfall. I immediately backed down on the audio a little bit (5th bar flickering to 4th bar flickering) but he said it made no difference. My next thought is some RF getting back into the audio which, with an OCF, wouldn't be unheard of. I wasn't looking forward to tracking that down. I've got puka beads at the feed and rig ends of the coax. Then I noticed my internal battery voltage was down to 8.8V key down. I put on the external battery which brought it up to 12.1V key down and he said the signal looked beautiful (still 4th bar flickering). The panic subsided. I'll need to be a little more aware of my battery voltage in the future. Viva la simple fixes. 73, Kevin K4VD ______________________________________________________________ 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 Message delivered to [email protected]
