Do you mean driving both a KPA1500 AND a KPA500 at the same time?! I don't know where that would be legal, practical, or desirable. But there's lots of stuff I don't know...
If you mean driving one's choice of KPA1500 OR KPA500, read on: Before KPA1500 became available, I had an Alpha 87A on K3 Rig 1 and a KPA500 on K3 Rig 2 for local SO2R operation. When I left that house and went to my valley QTH, I took Rig 2 with me and used it as a remote control head for Rig 1. The remote control app for the Alpha was ancient, unsupported, and had a pixel-level user interface which made it tiny and hard to read on a modern computer monitor. I also felt queasy about operating the Alpha remotely without the ability to hear its gears groaning and see its real front panel. So I rigged up the two amps to be selectable remotely and used the KPA500 most of the time via KPA500 Remote and KAT500 Remote. If I needed to bust a big pileup, I would occasionally "wave my magic wand" and use the Alpha. Once I replaced the Alpha with the KPA1500, this was no longer necessary but I still have the capability. To provide remote amplifier selection, I connected the Alpha (now KPA1500) to ANT1 on the Rig 1 K3 and the KPA500 to ANT2. I connected both band decoders and amplifiers in parallel to the K3 DB15 ACC connector. I would selectively power on one and only one band decoder using a remote controlled relay board from Velleman. Thus, the active decoder would drive a Six Pak antenna switch to connect the correct antenna to the desired amplifier and the ANT switch on the K3 would complete the correct RF path. PTT and band selection for the amps came through the DB15. The jungle of 15-pin Y connectors was pretty ugly - now I have an N6TV Y-Box which is cleaner. This setup worked most of the time, although I did occasionally encounter balky decoder operation, I think due to marginal fanout or lack of pull-ups on the ACC band data signals from one of the K3 radios. (I didn't always have the same K3 set up as Rig 1 or Rig 2/Control Head.) Since I installed the KPA1500, I haven't used this complex setup. KPA1500 and KPA500 are nearly identical through their respective KPAxxx Remote control applications and, in fact, KPA1500 Remote is more convenient because it bundles the ATU controls instead of requiring a separate KAT500 Remote application. So I just use the KPA1500. It was a fun exercise in system integration, though! ;-) 73, Rick N6XI -- Rick Tavan Truckee, CA On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 1:46 PM Dave <n...@comcast.net> wrote: > > Also, I’m wondering if anyone has run their KPA500 and a KPA1500 off of > the same K3? If so, how did you set it up? > > Tnx es 73, > Dave N8AG > > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
