I have used my K2 and later K2-100 as my camping rig since the year 2000. This year I wanted to try my K3-100 for field day as QRP 1B ND. I took the K3 with me over Memorial day and ran it at 100 W CW. On Sunday morning I did 160 meter SSB and AM. I was pleasantly surprised how well the battery lasted and no body gave me any bad reports. The time I tried the same thing with my IC-737 I was getting chirp reports within the first half hour and later on the receiver lost mow5 its sensitivity due to the low voltage. On the IC-737 I had to add a dry cell to the battery bus for the lower power stages but it was generally not a satisfactory situation.
The K2 was never bothered by the low voltages and in fact I never even saw the power back down as the regulators and auto gain circuits compensated well for the low voltages. I continued with the K2 even though I had the K3 last year as I felt any rig with all those nice features of the K3 could not possibly work on my camping battery. I ran the K3 as QRP 1B ND for field day and was pleased with how well it worked and my battery did not run down. I had always wanted to take a ham radio vacation to the woods of Northern Minnesota and decided this should work with the K3-100. I am using a three year old 105 amp hour group 24 RV battery and picked out a camp ground with no electricity for no AC line noise. I bought a Honda EU2000I generator and used my MFJ-4225MV switching power supply to recharge the battery. I changed every DC connector to the same PowerPole connector as the K3-100 uses for ease of charging and changing 12 volt configurations. I ran the K3-100 well over 100 hours and 25 days this summer at 100W CW using the following procedure. I would rag chew 3 to 5 hours a day and let the XL use the camper lights. The K3 would indicate 12.0 V on receive at the end of this time. Every afternoon I would run the generator for two hours. I would charge the battery at 16 amps untill the voltage reached 13.9 volts than I would continue until the charging current dropped down to 3.5 amps. This always took almost exactly two hours. The battery never used any water as I checked the levels in the cells. The battery lasted as well the last day as it did the first. The low background noise gave me the best ham radio experience I have ever had. The Honda generator used about a gallon of gas every 6 days. I operated a few times while the battery was charging and the noise from the Honda was low if a wrapped a 50 foot extension cord into a small coil but of course the battery by it self was another S unit or so quieter. I hope my report is helpful to others that want to operate in remote locations. I never thought I would replace the K2 with the K3 for battery operation but now I plan to stick with the K3 for all my camping. 73 Ken W0CZ ______________________________________________________________ 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
