[Elecraft] K2/K3 Operating Tip: Using SCAN to keep an eye on your favorite (too-quiet) band
When I was a teenage novice in the early 1970's, armed only with a Heathkit HW-16, 15 meters became my favorite band. It was a reliable source of DX contacts even when my entire antenna system was a multiband inverted-V a few feet off the roof. 15 m, as well as the other high HF bands (12 m, 10 m), can be sparsely populated at times, even when they're open. In the old days that meant tuning the VFO up and down, searching endlessly. But the K2 and K3 have a SCAN feature that lets the radio do the work, while you answer email, work on homebrew projects, clean up the shack, etc. I was reminded of this about half an hour ago. A quick check of 15 m revealed no signals, so I set up a background (muted) scan from 21.000-21.060 on the K3. A few minutes later the scan stopped at 21.026, where PJ2/KE1B was calling CQ. Since he had just started calling, there was no pileup, and I made the QSO on one call. For scanning instructions, see page 40 of the K3 owner's manual or page 103 of the K2 manual. Let me know what pops up. 73, Wayne N6KR __ 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
Re: [Elecraft] K2/K3 Operating Tip: Using SCAN to keep an eye on your favorite (too-quiet) band
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Re: [Elecraft] K2/K3 Operating Tip: Using SCAN to keep an eye on your favorite (too-quiet) band
Page 40 is the assignment tonight. :-) I did not know this existed. Don KD8NNU On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Wayne Burdick wrote: When I was a teenage novice in the early 1970's, armed only with a Heathkit HW-16, 15 meters became my favorite band. It was a reliable source of DX contacts even when my entire antenna system was a multiband inverted-V a few feet off the roof. 15 m, as well as the other high HF bands (12 m, 10 m), can be sparsely populated at times, even when they're open. In the old days that meant tuning the VFO up and down, searching endlessly. But the K2 and K3 have a SCAN feature that lets the radio do the work, while you answer email, work on homebrew projects, clean up the shack, etc. I was reminded of this about half an hour ago. A quick check of 15 m revealed no signals, so I set up a background (muted) scan from 21.000-21.060 on the K3. A few minutes later the scan stopped at 21.026, where PJ2/KE1B was calling CQ. Since he had just started calling, there was no pileup, and I made the QSO on one call. For scanning instructions, see page 40 of the K3 owner's manual or page 103 of the K2 manual. Let me know what pops up. 73, Wayne N6KR __ 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 __ 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
Re: [Elecraft] K2/K3 Operating Tip: Using SCAN to keep an eye on your favorite (too-quiet) band
Wayne, I often use the K3 scanner to listen for band activity (I wrote the SCANNOW key macro that scans immediately the range of freqs from VFO-A thru VFO-B). The scanner is great for keeping an eye (ear?) on the band while doing other things around the shack or, in my case, while busy with something at the other end of the house and listening via intercom. One thing that I often thought might be useful for this remote scanner monitoring would be the ability to set a specific dwell time. For example: once the scanner pauses on a signal it would automatically resume scanning after a user-settable amount of time. As it is now, the scan will sometimes pause too briefly or get hung up for too long on a particular signal; would be nice if I could set it for, say, exactly 10 seconds (or whatever amount) per hit. 73, Drew AF2Z On Wed, 04 May 2011 08:00:51 -0700, you wrote: When I was a teenage novice in the early 1970's, armed only with a Heathkit HW-16, 15 meters became my favorite band. It was a reliable source of DX contacts even when my entire antenna system was a multiband inverted-V a few feet off the roof. 15 m, as well as the other high HF bands (12 m, 10 m), can be sparsely populated at times, even when they're open. In the old days that meant tuning the VFO up and down, searching endlessly. But the K2 and K3 have a SCAN feature that lets the radio do the work, while you answer email, work on homebrew projects, clean up the shack, etc. I was reminded of this about half an hour ago. A quick check of 15 m revealed no signals, so I set up a background (muted) scan from 21.000-21.060 on the K3. A few minutes later the scan stopped at 21.026, where PJ2/KE1B was calling CQ. Since he had just started calling, there was no pileup, and I made the QSO on one call. For scanning instructions, see page 40 of the K3 owner's manual or page 103 of the K2 manual. Let me know what pops up. 73, Wayne N6KR __ 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
Re: [Elecraft] K2/K3 Operating Tip: Using SCAN to keep an eye
I tried it, and thought I had flunked scanning 101. You have to push the M - V button twice before pushing the scan button. Maybe it says that somewhere, but I didn't see it. I was only pushing it once. Anyway, now it plays! Watching my P3, however, it does skip over some signals. Some seemed sufficiently strong to have stopped the scan, but I suppose it is a matter of whether or not a character is being sent at precisely the moment the scan feature rolls across that freq. Dave W7AQK --- Page 40 is the assignment tonight. :-) I did not know this existed. Don KD8NNU __ 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
