Hi Jim & the others who replied, This is a follow-up for someone in the future who looks for the same solution.
Yeah, the small amount of difference in the wattage is insignificant but considering all the radios I've owned, the low end of the bands were always the highest output. 10M was usually the lowest output & with the K3/K3s, 6M was always as good as the other bands watt wise and 160 was full output. This not being the case, I was concerned. I had done the calibration and raised the output to 87W but that was it. As was suggested, I raised the voltage from the PS to give me 13.8V on transmit which required 14.6V resting. I'm using the cable Elecraft supplies and I'm suspecting it could be just a tad lower gauge/thicker copper to reduce the resistance but on 160M, I am now getting a 115W reading on the P3 and 113W on the LP-100A. So the increased voltage was the difference in my case. A thicker wire would certainly require less voltage than 14.6 and that's what I am going to look into. With the power Pole connector, I'll have to look a little deeper into what will work best. I have no crimping tool for Power Pole so that makes it more of a challenge. Anyway, thanks Jim & all who suggested the higher voltage, it was the answer in this instance. 73, Gary KA1J > On Fri,12/16/2016 9:27 PM, Gary Smith wrote: > > With the ATU in or out it gives 81W out on 160, SWR is 1.28 > > > > All other bands except 6M give around 98W, 6M gives 87W > > > > Any ideas what might be causing the lower output on 160? > > 81W is 0.9 dB less than 100W; 87W is 0.6 dB less than 100W. On 6M, > it's probably a simple matter of efficiency -- power amps are slightly > less efficient on 6M than on the lower bands. > > And there may be a power calibration issue. There's a procedure in the > manual for doing that. > > Or even error in the power measurement itself. Few power meters are > specified for better than 5%. Bird wattmeters are specified as 5% of > full scale, and a condition of that is that the slug is in > calibration. If, for example, you're using a 250W slug, accuracy is > +/- 12.5W. I use an N8LP LP100A, which specifies 5% at any power level > from 1W, and quotes 3% typical. 5% is 0.22 dB. 3% is 0.13 dB. > > Low DC voltage can also be an issue, either due to the power supply > itself or IR loss in the power cable (or even the connector(s). Use > the built-in metering function to check DC voltage with just the RX > running and keydown. Short, fat copper is your friend. :) > > 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 > Message delivered to [email protected] > ______________________________________________________________ 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]
