I had my first weekend with the new K3 and bumped into a strange problem. It actually took me a while to figure out what was going on. When keying up with the amplifier in line on 160 I was not able to run more than 400 watts before the SWR protection in both the amp and SWR meter kicked in, it all happened in milliseconds as if arcing was going on somewhere. I thought I had an antenna problem and went through the system without finding anything strange. After some time I hooked up my MP and all was fine again, running full power without a problem. Thats when it hit me - RF feedback had to be throwing my K3 off frequency and therefore tripping SWR protection and the alarm.
My setup has been working fine with the MP for over a year, never seen a problem like this. A common mode choke is in line with the TX antenna and most of the wiring used with the MP was used for the K3 except that power where fetched from my 12 volt bus. The MP is a field model and gets its power straight from the mains, same phase as the 12 volt bus. I would be interested to hear if anyone else had similar problems and found a good solution. 73 de Björn /SM0MDG _______________________________________________ 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
