Dave, For reasons other than twinges of nostalgia for boat-anchor gear, I can't understand why anyone would want to actually use such a combination - the K2 has a much better receiver and works QSK nicely as a stand-alone transceiver. I would think the Drake would be quite useful as a station 'decoration' that even works, but it is just not up to par with modern receivers (although the R4A was one of the better ones).
So, yes, you may want to try the AMP keying circuit to see if that works - if it does not mute the receiver quickly enough for QSK operation, you could add some delay (more circuits in the keying circuit) to hold the receiver in a muted state. Consider also the problem of switching the antenna between the receiver and transmitter. Because of these considerations, you may want to consider breaking the paddle lines and the mic PTT line to the K2 (so it does not go into transmit until the receiver is ready) and use an external T/R switching arrangement with relays doing all these tasks rather than using the K2 output to initiate the switching. Yes, I am thinking that an old-fashioned Transmit/Receive manual switch may be in order here, but the problem still remains of spotting the transmit signal, the K2 has no ready means to transmit a tiny signal to be heard in the receiver, and the K2 VFO does not change the K2 frequency while transmitting - OK, back to the drawing board! Have you considered homebrewing a boat-anchor transmitter? 73, Don W3FPR > -----Original Message----- > > Recently I bought an excellent Drake R4A and am struggling to find a > companion transmitter for it. One option could be to use my K2 as a > stand alone transmitter with an appropriate "external receiver" output > modification to the K2 and a "mute" relay fed from the normal linear > amplifier relay. > > I feel sure someone else must have gone down this route, so before I > reach for the cutters and soldering iron I would like to compare > thoughts and ideas! > > 73 Dave, G4AON > _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
