Re: [Elecraft] Hang-up on Relay Using QSK

2015-12-11 Thread Al Lorona
>This also is just another example of our strange predilection to always >blame the K3 first, which after noting what actually was found, is most >often just dead wrong. >Guy K2AV Yes. The problem almost always is not with the K3. I'd say 80% of the time it's the logging or computer program con

Re: [Elecraft] Frequency Memory Editor Software

2015-12-14 Thread Al Lorona
Hi, Steve, I ran into that bug about a month ago. Dick Dievendorff sent me to elecraft.com to get a new version with the fix. You want to find version 1.15.8.18, bottom of the page. http://www.elecraft.com/K3/k3_software.htm R, Al W6LX From: Stephen Sheare

Re: [Elecraft] Controlled Envelope SSB

2016-01-09 Thread Al Lorona
If there are any [Keysight Technologies] SystemVue users out there I had implemented W9GR's CESSB algorithm after his first excellent article, and I'd be happy to share the workspace with you. Dave also made his MATLAB files available for download from the ARRL site after his initial article, f

Re: [Elecraft] KPA500 finals blown

2016-01-21 Thread Al Lorona
Holy smokes. If the ceramic was actually blown off of the transistor packages (!), be careful not to inhale any ceramic dust that may be present. That's beryllium oxide which is quite toxic in dust form. Al  W6LX __ Elecraft mailing list

Re: [Elecraft] K3 Compression compared to CESSB

2016-01-22 Thread Al Lorona
Slight correction: not a factor of 2.5, but 2.5 dB, which is a factor of about 1.8. Al W6LX >>> It is interesting note that the CESSB methodology >>>increases the average power by a factor of some 2.5. __ Elecraft mailing list

Re: [Elecraft] K3 Compression compared to CESSB

2016-01-22 Thread Al Lorona
Okay, I see what you're looking at... I believe that's a plot of the output of a simulation, whereas in practice he's seeing about 2.5 dB [re: the original technical article in QEX Nov/Dec 2014]. Al W6LX __ Elecraft mailing list

[Elecraft] [K3] Clock bug?

2016-01-27 Thread Al Lorona
1. I have the clock on all of the time. 2. Today when I turned on my K3 I noticed that the clock was behind by several seconds. 3. All I did was hit the DISP button, then hit it again to look at the clock again and it was back on the correct time. As if it re-read itself and updated itself t

[Elecraft] [P3TXMON] 200W sensor at higher power levels

2016-02-03 Thread Al Lorona
Is the P3 TX MON 200 W sensor damaged by application of power levels higher than 200 W? Thank you, Al W6LX __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: ma

[Elecraft] List <>

2016-02-17 Thread Al Lorona
There's a lot of tension on the list right now. Can we all just step back for a second? This list, at times, can be downright infuriating to those of us who ask a question in good faith, only to have the thread go off the rails in a matter of minutes. I've been victimized countless times. When

[Elecraft] [K3] Setting RF gain & AGC correctly

2016-04-08 Thread Al Lorona
Again and again, I have asked (privately) those reporting 'bad K3 audio' to furnish me with settings, measurements, recordings -- anything-- but I haven't ever received anything with which I could diagnose the problem. Bad. Noisy. Fatiguing. These adjectives have been used continually to describ

[Elecraft] When do I need atten or preamp?

2016-04-09 Thread Al Lorona
I ran several simulations of the K3 receiver using Genesys (from Keysight Technologies) to find out how to use the attenuator and preamp optimally. An article by Jim Fisk W1HR appeared in October 1975 in ham radio magazine where he gave the acceptable noise figure (NF) for a receiver on each HF

Re: [Elecraft] [K3] Setting RF gain & AGC correctly

2016-04-12 Thread Al Lorona
Yes, I've heard about those amazing EME guys. I guess if you can copy signals below the noise you know who you are, and you can ignore guys like me! I have been, of course, referring not to soundcard-decoded modes but to human ear-decoded modes, using a speaker or headphones. This is the scenari

Re: [Elecraft] Will the K4 look like this?

2016-04-12 Thread Al Lorona
I must rant: Good video quality... typically LOUSY audio quality. The internet is filled with videos of rigs where the rig's cheap internal speaker is being picked up by a camera mic several feet away in an echoey room. Haven't any of these poor guys ever heard of audio direct? Al W6LX

Re: [Elecraft] Updated K2?

2016-04-27 Thread Al Lorona
Something really nice about the K2's DSP is that all of the bandwidth, gain, and denoising parameters are adjustable. There is a wide range of filtering and denoising possible with very fine gradations. If you like to tweak, go for it. But, as Phil implies, if you lack the patience to get the pa

Re: [Elecraft] A helpful review...

2016-05-01 Thread Al Lorona
Ahh, this is right on the mark. How many times have you heard a ham say, "I didn't like Radio X because it didn't have enough close-spaced dynamic range." Me, almost never. Instead, I usually hear that hams have discarded a radio because of a million different reasons like "bad" or "noisy" aud

[Elecraft] [OT] Gap Width

2020-03-28 Thread Al Lorona
Hi, Everybody, What do you set your gap width to on the contacts of your paddles? Is there an optimum gap width, or is it totally a personal preference? Because this is an off-topic post, if you reply to me please do it directly. Thanks! Regards, Al  W6LX _

[Elecraft] Results of 'survey'

2020-03-29 Thread Al Lorona
Thanks to all who replied to my question about gap width on your paddles. I got answers ranging from 0.6 mil (15.24 micron) to 30 mil (0.762 mm), a spread of 50x! This obviously comes down to personal preference. I had to smile at the reply from George, W3HBM: "Whatever feels good to you!  Enjoy

Re: [Elecraft] K3 on SSB

2020-03-31 Thread Al Lorona
Jack beat me to the comment I was going to make. Far be it from me to contradict a seasoned contester like W3LPL, nor to dismiss the comments of many others, but I wonder how many "the K3 sounds bad on SSB" comments occur because of operator error in setting the AGC and gain controls improperly?

Re: [Elecraft] K4 S-meter characteristics

2020-04-23 Thread Al Lorona
Now that the K4 has exact knowledge of its gains and losses through the preamps, attenuators, splitters, bandpass filters and so forth, could this enable an alternate way of visualizing the receiver's range? This alternate measurement would be quite useful in setting the controls optimally for a

Re: [Elecraft] K3/K3S receiver and high-precision frequencydetermination?

2020-04-24 Thread Al Lorona
It's a good thing I didn't carry through on my plan to operate the K3 with a paper in the place of the top cover! That was a close call. Seriously, don't *all* DDSs/PLLs/synthesizers/SDRs (and, thus, all modern transceivers) tune in steps? How is the tuning step related to the stability of an o

Re: [Elecraft] RX Ant K3 Preamp vs External Preamp

2020-04-26 Thread Al Lorona
Precisely the intended application for a visual aid to show where the sensitivity of the receiver sits relative to the band noise. W3LPL is absolutely correct in asserting that relatively few know how to optimize their settings for a given band condition. Just sayin'. Al  W6LX > wrote: >Th

Re: [Elecraft] K4???

2020-05-15 Thread Al Lorona
Jim is right. Those of you outside of California would probably have a difficult time imagining how differently we are experiencing the lockdown-- which is an aptly descriptive noun-- here in California. The latest long-term outlook we received from Sacramento earlier this week made most of us

Re: [Elecraft] K3 QSK Timing

2020-06-02 Thread Al Lorona
Really interesting, Vic. Here's a minor point: Instead of measuring to the "first whiff" of RF, I'd probably measure to the point of 90% of max RF value. This is because the rise time of a pulse is usually defined as the time to go from 10% to 90% of the final (peak) value.  Congratulations on

Re: [Elecraft] CW rise time setting

2020-06-09 Thread Al Lorona
I used to think that the rise and fall times of the CW pulse didn't really matter much to the sideband levels; I believed that it was more a function of the waveshaping, especially at the corners of the pulse. But I just ran a quick simulation of a pulse train going through both a raised cosine

Re: [Elecraft] CW rise time setting

2020-06-09 Thread Al Lorona
I used: 1/(1+exp(-x)) where x = the pulse train. I then modulated a 7 MHz carrier with the result (although the results don't care what the RF frequency is, of course). Al  W6LX >>>Which sigmoid function did you model, Al? __ Elecra

Re: [Elecraft] K3 QSK Timing

2020-06-11 Thread Al Lorona
I have always felt as K9ZTV does. I don't mean to speak heresy here, and I would never deny anybody's right to use full QSK, such as when chasing DX. However, I have never felt the need to hear between dits. Between characters or words seems more than enough for me, especially at the CW speeds

[Elecraft] [K3] Memory Editor error

2012-08-24 Thread Al Lorona
Occasionally when writing memories to the K3 with the Frequency Memory Editor I see the following error in the write status window: WriteMemory2State.OnTimerExpiry yet the memories always seem to be written correctly. Should I be concerned with this error? Al W6LX _

[Elecraft] [P3] Adjusting Center Freq in Narrow Span

2012-09-04 Thread Al Lorona
Something that I've not been able to do successfully: Tune to a standard frequency station, like WWV on 10 MHz. Center WWV on the P3 screen (in other words, make the Center Freq = 1 kHz exactly). I want to span down from 20 kHz to the minimum span, 2 kHz. NOTE: FixTrack = Fixed-tune mode fo

Re: [Elecraft] [K3] Phase Noise / CW Key Clicks

2012-09-13 Thread Al Lorona
I once spoke to a nationally-known, "Big Gun" contester who felt that the phase noise and key click sidebands generated by his station were an asset because they cleared a "guard band" around his signal since other stations had to stay away. He felt no motivation at all to clean up his signal. I

Re: [Elecraft] New beta K3 firmware!

2012-09-21 Thread Al Lorona
I don't know the motivation for the FM filter request, but I will say that here in the US there are vast expanses of the bands that are mostly unused. For instance, night after night there isn't a single station between 3600 and 3700 kHz here on the west coast. As another data point, I just coun

Re: [Elecraft] K3 - Filter suggestions for new builder

2012-09-25 Thread Al Lorona
The subject of extra-narrow SSB bandwidths comes up fairly regularly. These 1.8 kHz (and even 1.5 kHz in use out there) bandwidths are not effective for everybody. The older I get, the less I can tolerate these narrow bandwidths for SSB, even in a contest. They give me listener's fatigue. I am

Re: [Elecraft] K3 - Filter suggestions for new builder

2012-09-26 Thread Al Lorona
Right, Don! I still believe that many K3 users are under the erroneous impression that the roofing filter determines the receiver bandwidth. It does not. The HI and LO knobs do. The only thing the roofing filter does is determine the MAXIMUM possible bandwidth of the receiver. In 99% of case

Re: [Elecraft] K3 - Filter suggestions for new builder

2012-09-26 Thread Al Lorona
Another way of looking at it is this: Just because a signal gets inside of your roofing filter doesn't mean squat. If the mixers can handle the signal's level, and the HI LO cut controls can slice off the signal, you won't even know it's there. You simply don't care! The only time this could be

Re: [Elecraft] Tuners and spurious responses

2018-12-21 Thread Al Lorona
Vic, it may well be your imagination (!) but you may also be hearing the rejection that your tuner gives you, particularly to strong AM stations in the broadcast band. My measurements, as well as circuit simulation, show about a 40 dB rejection of AM stations when the tuner is tuned to 40 meters

Re: [Elecraft] Tuners and spurious responses

2018-12-22 Thread Al Lorona
No, not a null, but a rolloff. When I quoted -40 dB I didn't mean a notch at one frequency, but the stopband level reached by the time you get well into the broadcast band. So that would be -40 dB on all AM stations below a certain frequency. The K3 is a good receiver, but every receiver has it

Re: [Elecraft] Sorta OT - assistive technology assistance

2019-01-11 Thread Al Lorona
JR - I have a folder of dozens of replies to Elecraft posts that I've never sent. (I try to exercise discipline so that the moderator doesn't have to slap me on the hand.) But your reply said *exactly* what a draft that I had written said. I'm very happy that you expressed the same idea. Buildi

Re: [Elecraft] Slightly Unbalanced dipole?

2019-01-13 Thread Al Lorona
By the way, whenever Jim says, "...a very good common mode choke at the  feedpoint of an antenna...," he means an antenna fed with coax. For the rest of us, of course, that choke would (should) go at the output of the antenna tuner, whether in the shack or close by. Al  W6LX   _

Re: [Elecraft] Slightly Unbalanced dipole?

2019-01-13 Thread Al Lorona
You guys keep talking about coax-fed antennas. Yes, although it may be easy to wind coax around a toroid and put it up at the antenna midpoint, that's not so easy with open-wire line. This discussion was very coax-centric and I wanted to open your minds that not everybody feeds their antenna wit

Re: [Elecraft] Non-Resonant Antennas and Chokes

2019-01-13 Thread Al Lorona
>>> the feedline is a wire dangling from the antenna  >>> that isn't connected to anything on the other end. That "dangling wire" is actually *two* wires, and the field of one cancels the field of the other for no net radiation or reception -- at least that is the condition we're trying to achie

Re: [Elecraft] KAT 500 and open wire

2019-01-18 Thread Al Lorona
G3TXQ's work here is awesome, as is N7WS's before him. I'm thinking two things: Thing 1 is that, clearly, water really messes up window line's loss. However, I'm guessing that a/ in a place like southern California, where perpetual drought is the new normal; and b/ in an installation where the

[Elecraft] 1500 W is a lot of power

2019-03-11 Thread Al Lorona
About two months ago I posted that amateur radio needs a tutorial, 'What to expect when you get an amplifier'. As we see again and again here even basic things like cables, connectors, grounding, and house wiring that work fine at 100 W may be inadequate for 1500 W. We need guidance to study our

[Elecraft] The case against touch screens

2019-03-24 Thread Al Lorona
Thaddeus sits down at the rig. Today is the day Bouvet is supposed to come on the air, and thousands of hams around the world must be tuning around at this moment trying to be the first to work the DXpedition. He gets a feeling and tunes low in the band, turning the knob as if he were breaking

Re: [Elecraft] The case against touch screens

2019-03-25 Thread Al Lorona
I don't think you guys understood me. I shouldn't have veiled my concern with a tongue-in-cheek post. So I will be direct. I was referring to the physiological event of touching a screen with a finger. It must be just me, because a large percentage of the time a touch screen does not respond to

[Elecraft] Measuring SWR (Long)

2019-04-09 Thread Al Lorona
There's always a lot of discussion about measuring SWR, low SWR values, SWR lights not lighting up, etc. Here's something that might give you a better 'feel' for SWR. Imagine that you measure your forward power at 100 W and your reflected power at only 1 W. You'd probably be very happy about th

[Elecraft] OT: Ground Loss (long)

2015-07-22 Thread Al Lorona
I wasn't clear enough in my last post. Let me try to put this idea out there one more time.  If you have an antenna modeling program like EZNEC you can perform a simple experiment to illustrate a strange behavior of ground loss.  The EZNEC example "Elevrad1" is a 1/4-wave vertical with 4 radials

[Elecraft] OT: Ground Loss (long)

2015-07-22 Thread Al Lorona
I don't know why the server always does that my posts. Sorry. Last try. Then I give up. If you have an antenna modeling program like EZNEC you can perform a simple experiment to illustrate a strange behavior of ground loss. The EZNEC example "Elevrad1" is a 1/4-wave vertical with 4 radials

Re: [Elecraft] I wonder how many folks have had buyers remorse on a K3/K3S purchase?

2015-08-03 Thread Al Lorona
This is true for some people, but many folks can't get past the looks of a rig. A "well-known" ham in Nevada likes to get on 75 meters and when the subject of the K3 he once owned (for just a few days) comes up, he loves to retell the reasons why he got rid of it. "It looked like it was put tog

Re: [Elecraft] K3S IMD Questions

2015-09-05 Thread Al Lorona
Exactly right, Wes. The 10 dB rule-of-thumb is a *minimum* and it would be better if the measuring instrument were more than 10 dB better. I'm not sure that the Flex radio originally mentioned meets that phase noise requirement. If its phase noise is on par with the K3's then it's not suitable

Re: [Elecraft] (OT) Touchscreens

2015-09-07 Thread Al Lorona
Oh! There's the P7... calling CQ... and no one is coming back to him!! I'll be the first to work him... I can't believe this... Let me just use my cool touchscreen... I move his signal with my index finger into the passband... and then throw my call out... wait... what the... Oh no, the itty-bit

Re: [Elecraft] K3 to IC-7800 Comparison?

2015-09-13 Thread Al Lorona
Adam has always been very dismissive publicly of the K3 architecture. However, I would hope that his personal opinion does not in any way influence the results of his testing. Al  W6LX __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.n

[Elecraft] Analog vs. Digital Front Ends

2015-09-15 Thread Al Lorona
Adam Farson's explanation of why the ADC clipping level has to be avoided at all costs is another reason why many people still prefer analog front ends. Don't proponents of analog audio point out that when an analog channel overloads, it does so "gracefully"? This is especially true of fans of v

Re: [Elecraft] Analog vs. Digital Front Ends

2015-09-16 Thread Al Lorona
This is really good information, Alan, and makes sense. Regarding the approximation to Gaussian noise... given that most signals on a crowded band during a contest are highly compressed (their peak-to-average ratios are much smaller) would this make matters better or worse for the ADC, or no dif

Re: [Elecraft] K3 Digital Voice Mode - our future?

2015-09-18 Thread Al Lorona
I'm sorry, I don't begrudge anybody wanting to experiment with digital voice, but every time I listen to audio clips of DV I am appalled by the sound quality. I have to prefer SSB almost every single time. The examples on that site of DV with a 20 dB SNR are pretty awful. Thy soun like litte

Re: [Elecraft] K3 Digital Voice Mode - our future?

2015-09-18 Thread Al Lorona
That's not so much of a bandwidth problem as a courtesy problem. Al W6LX _ And don't try to make a SSB QSO on the frequencies that the SSTV crowd has claimed, eventhough they are dead when you call. __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http:

Re: [Elecraft] K3S In-Depth Review Coming Soon?

2015-10-27 Thread Al Lorona
Oh no... Oh no, not the "bad K3 audio" thread again?! I'm pretty sure that, five years from now, people will still be asking, "Was the phase noise of the new synthesizers reviewed in QST ever fixed so that it's better than the old synthesizer at higher offsets?" Al W6LX _

Re: [Elecraft] P3 - Waterfall Marker?

2015-11-04 Thread Al Lorona
I think what Steve is asking for is a dot (non-line) marker at the *bottom* of the waterfall and that doesn't have persistence (doesn't "leave a trail"), so that he can line it up with a scrolling signal and then QSY to it before it disappears off the bottom of the screen. It's actually not too

[Elecraft] [K3] - Sub receiver S-meter

2015-11-06 Thread Al Lorona
When B SET is pressed the S-meter is tied to the sub receiver. But how does one go about calibrating the sub rx's S-meter? Is it even possible? The User Guide seems to imply so. Al  W6LX __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qt

Re: [Elecraft] line out plug dimensions

2015-11-11 Thread Al Lorona
Isn't the line out 2-channel mono, except when the sub is turned on? For example, you won't hear the AFX effects on the line out. Al  W6LX From: Robin Moseley To: w3...@embarqmail.com; todd ruby ; Elecraft Reflector Reflector Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 3:55 PM Subject: Re: [E

Re: [Elecraft] K3S DSP Filter Plots

2015-11-18 Thread Al Lorona
In fact I've always calibrated my K3 S-meter to be 5 dB per division both above and below S9. This seems to me to be a consistent way to do it that's easy to read and easy to mentally convert to dBm. And the K3 amazingly consistently sticks to this 5 dB calibration from S1 to 50 dB over. Al W

Re: [Elecraft] P3 Showing Transmit Signal

2015-11-27 Thread Al Lorona
I finished the SSCW on 40 and while in QSK noticed my own echoes. I thought that the K3's QSK or sidetone had weirded out and was confused and bummed out about it until I listened on a 2nd receiver and figured out that it was my own echoes, although I didn't believe what I was hearing. I've neve

Re: [Elecraft] N1MM CW issue

2015-12-04 Thread Al Lorona
Right after the CW SS I composed a message for the list, then trashed it after sleeping on it which I always do before posting. Now that the issue has come up on its own I wish to make an observation. During the contest I heard many stations with shortened dits. They sounded pretty bad and I re

Re: [Elecraft] K3 Preamp 2

2018-04-07 Thread Al Lorona
Hi, Barry, It's not the signals that determine whether you need a preamp, it's the noise level. A receiver should have enough gain to put its internal noise floor below the external, atmospheric noise floor, so that it doesn't become the limiting factor in hearing weak signals close to the noise

Re: [Elecraft] When to use the preamp on the K3/K3S

2018-05-23 Thread Al Lorona
Scott, If the weakest signals are already activating the AGC, that's the exact condition that leads to the many 'my K3 is noisy' complaints that we see here. Plus, that tends to make all signals sound like they're the same strength, another complaint we've heard in the past. In fact, you don't

Re: [Elecraft] New to Elecraft and my experience

2018-05-23 Thread Al Lorona
Contrast your experience, James, with what happened recently when I purchased a kit on eBay from a seller in a country that now has the NSA observing me closely for collusion. When I emailed to tell the seller that two critical parts were missing from the kit, he replied that that was "rubbish"

Re: [Elecraft] Boldly OT: 6 meter Sporadic-E season and the FT-8 microjuggernaut

2018-06-01 Thread Al Lorona
I wrote an April Fool's article back in like 1999 (I might still be able to find it on dejanews) describing a make-believe ARRL contest which was totally automated; contesters could come home from work and peruse their logs to see what stations their computers had 'worked' that day.  When parody

Re: [Elecraft] Field Day rig experience

2018-06-10 Thread Al Lorona
If you do take the icom, at 3.5A receive current drain you'd better take two extra batteries, too. Al W6LX >> Take the K3 , leave the IC-7610 at home. It’s to darn heavy to lug around. >> (19 lbs ) >>NS2N __ Elecraft mailing list

Re: [Elecraft] Field Day Report

2018-06-24 Thread Al Lorona
NR6TT/7, situated 1500 feet above Flaming Gorge in extreme northeastern Utah at 7700 feet, was plagued not primarily by the thunderstorm QRN, dead band conditions, or the incredible windstorm on Saturday night that undid a tautline hitch and knocked down our antenna, but by curious passers-by in

Re: [Elecraft] [K3] factory upgrade to K3(s)

2018-06-29 Thread Al Lorona
I'm not sure I agree with the exact numbers, Ian. I'm looking at the review from Nov 2015 QST (from the Product Review archive on www.arrl.org ) and it appears that the difference in phase noise between old and new synths is closer to about 3 dB (difficult to tell from the graph) beginning at of

Re: [Elecraft] help wiring a mic?

2018-07-06 Thread Al Lorona
The poor guy who started this thread just wanted to know how to wire a mic. It quickly became a discussion of whether he should even use that mic. I don't believe we have that right. The question is about an XLR connector. We should either answer his question or lay out. Al W6LX _

Re: [Elecraft] Portable Battery tests

2018-08-17 Thread Al Lorona
Howie this is excellent data. Thank you for your work in this area. The table really clearly shows the tradeoffs between cost, weight, volume, capacity and everything else. Alkaline batteries do pretty well for themselves, although I'm not sure why the voltage for 8 cells is listed at only 9.6 V

[Elecraft] [OT] FT-8 files

2018-08-20 Thread Al Lorona
I'd like to obtain IQ baseband files of an FT-8 signal, either separate I and Q files or combined in one text file. Is that easy for someone to do? Thanks, and please contact me off list. Al  W6LX __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mai

[Elecraft] [P3] Mkr A

2010-11-30 Thread Al Lorona
I could have sworn that in the past Mkr A (and B) could be moved around once the trace was frozen, but now the markers are also frozen with the trace. Too bad. I used to use it to make measurements of transient signals. I hope this is temporary. 00.41. Al W6LX

Re: [Elecraft] Interesting Conversation about FT-5000 vs K3

2010-12-01 Thread Al Lorona
What you should have done at the beginning of the conversation, Lee, is sent an e-mail to Wayne and Eric (and also to the president of Vertex). By the time dessert came around, you could probably have read him the reply from Elecraft. On 12/1/2010 7:14 AM, Lee Buller wrote: > So, after this lo

Re: [Elecraft] Fwd: New Sherwood report

2010-12-01 Thread Al Lorona
Tables like this one mean almost nothing to me. Dynamic range is so good across the board that it's now overrated. When you're talking about differences of a few dB other details start to matter much more. For instance, the chief factor that pushed me off the fence toward a K3 was it's diversity

[Elecraft] New source of RFI located

2010-12-02 Thread Al Lorona
To add to the collective RFI intelligence of the group: I identified yet another source of RFI this evening. Cross off the Uniden DECT3080 cordless phone off your Christmas shopping lists. When the handset is placed back into the cradle (the "base" unit) it emits a noise burst on 80 meters. Th

Re: [Elecraft] On the K3's CW keying envelope shaping, rise/fall times, and CW ALC

2010-12-03 Thread Al Lorona
Several years ago when the K2 modification was created by Wayne to implement a raised cosine keying filter I installed it and both ran simulations and made measurements of the resulting waveform, which agreed very closely. In fact, I liked the result so much that I duplicated the circuit and mod

[Elecraft] [P3] Display of K3 parameters

2010-12-11 Thread Al Lorona
Months ago I had heard a rumor that the P3 could eventually function as a read-only display that could inform the operator of these various settings. Al W6LX (Subject: line changed to reflect the current topic.) > There's a great need for some simple utilities for the K3 that will run with LP

[Elecraft] [OT] The Thread of all Threads

2010-12-13 Thread Al Lorona
This morning I got up and turned on the K3. I was shocked to find RFI from my Eveready flashlight on 7040, a birdie on 7160.1850192827354637, and with the noise blanker on I could hear splatter from my nextdoor neighbor's kilowatt at the bottom of the band. So I decided to update the firmware.

[Elecraft] [P3] VFO A cursor shifts after TUNE

2011-01-09 Thread Al Lorona
Why does my P3 do this?: In LSB mode, whenever I go into TUNE for more than about six or seven seconds, upon hitting the XMIT button to come back out of TUNE the VFO A cursor has shifted into an incorrect position. (Instead of showing an LSB position below center frequency [in this particular c

Re: [Elecraft] P3 S meter variance

2011-01-16 Thread Al Lorona
An SSB signal that is S9 on the K3's S-meter is not going to measure S9 on the P3. The reason is that an SSB signal has bandwidth, and the sum of all of the signal within that bandwidth is what the K3's S-meter reads. You would have to add up all of the power of the SSB signal on the P3's disp

Re: [Elecraft] Microphone

2016-10-13 Thread Al Lorona
The use of professional broadcasting and recording microphones is totally ridiculous overkill for ham radio application. On the air, these mics are indistinguishable from much cheaper units, if everything's adjusted properly. A ham who spends more than $75 on a mic because he feels he needs to

[Elecraft] [K3] The Way We Rank Receivers (long)

2016-10-24 Thread Al Lorona
Receivers are always ranked by the "2 kHz third order dynamic range", such as at: http://www.remeeus.eu/hamradio/pa1hr/productreview.pdf but do we really grasp the meaning of these specs? For instance, the Elecraft K3's (after synthesizer upgrade) number is 103 dB, good enough to be in the top

Re: [Elecraft] Chinese Filters on eBay

2016-11-02 Thread Al Lorona
When purchasing a used K3, remember to ask, "Are the filters genuine Elecraft?" Al W6LX __ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.

Re: [Elecraft] KX3 Transmit EQ Settings

2016-11-11 Thread Al Lorona
These two sentences contain all of the phonemes (sounds) of the English language and I have found them useful in adjusting things: "Joe took father's shoe bench out." "She was waiting at my lawn." Al W6LX >> The process is to speak random words for several seconds while monitoring >> wi

[Elecraft] [P3] Ability to copy very weak signals

2016-11-26 Thread Al Lorona
How are your 'ears'-- your ability to copy very weak CW signals? Here's a way to "measure" your ears. You'll need your panadapter set to a narrow span such as 2 kHz. Turn on averaging so that the noise flattens out to allow you to estimate the true level of the noise. Use a full-screen vertical

Re: [Elecraft] So glad I asked

2017-01-01 Thread Al Lorona
Bill, Shame on all of us for nearly stifling your question. I hope nobody is ever scared to ask a question here, no matter what it is. Happy New Year, Al W6LX >>When I posted about the gain levels of amplifiers etc. I was worried >>about a back lash and hate mail - I nearly did not post

Re: [Elecraft] K3S Set-up for WSJT-X

2017-01-06 Thread Al Lorona
Wow, things have changed. In the early years of the Macintosh its claim to fame was true plug-and-play, where the user never had to go into the operating system to execute commands, never had to see a "DOS prompt". Since following this thread I see that that is no longer the case. That's too bad

Re: [Elecraft] Source for K3 weighted knobs

2017-01-17 Thread Al Lorona
Take it from me: metal knobs are overrated. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this but I once obtained some really spiffy metal knobs to replace the plastic ones and ultimately put the plastic ones back on because I believe plastic really does have a better feel, especially when knobs are small.

[Elecraft] [KPA500] Pushing an amplifier

2017-01-19 Thread Al Lorona
Many of us would feel a psychological edge if we pushed an amplifier such as the KPA500 from its rated 500 W to, say, 625 W. It sounds like so much more, doesn't it? It sure makes us feel better to think that we're louder on the other end. But first, on your S-meter take a look at the width of

Re: [Elecraft] Interesting Headphones

2017-02-03 Thread Al Lorona
WARNING: LESS-THAN-POSITIVE RESPONSE BELOW I don't know... With three tattoos, two full beards and a man-bun on their page, I don't quite think I'm in their target demographic. I think their thing is simply equalizing the frequency response of each ear, no?  Just use the RX EQ on your K3. Al  W6L

Re: [Elecraft] RX Mush, why the fuss?

2017-03-02 Thread Al Lorona
It isn't so much that 'the strongest signal in the passband determines the gain of the receiver', it's that once that strong signal sends the receiver into AGC, additional signals in the passband do not increase the audio output power when the Slope is set at or near its extreme. This is a form

Re: [Elecraft] RX Mush, why the fuss?

2017-03-02 Thread Al Lorona
Oh no! I fear this is going to get bogged down in definitions. From Wikipedia: "Limiting can refer to non-linear clipping, in which a signal is passed through normally but 'sheared off' when it would normally exceed a certain threshold. It can also refer to a type of variable-gain audio level c

[Elecraft] [K3] AGC White Paper

2017-03-05 Thread Al Lorona
I spent a little bit of time this weekend and put together yet another K3 AGC (YAKA) "white paper" to put some measurements and discussion of the results down in the hope that others may benefit. Maybe it'll help folks understand AGC better by demystifying some of the K3 idiosyncrasies. I hope i

Re: [Elecraft] [K3] AGC White Paper

2017-03-06 Thread Al Lorona
indistinguishable from the stronger one. That's a limiting receiver, nice for FM, not so nice for CW/SSB. All IMHO, of course, Wes N7WS On 3/5/2017 10:50 PM, Al Lorona wrote: > I spent a little bit of time this weekend and put together yet another K3 AGC > (YAKA) "white

[Elecraft] [OT] Question about power lines

2017-03-10 Thread Al Lorona
One leg of a horizontal antenna has to, unfortunately, run parallel to the power lines at the back of a city lot. Will there be more pickup of electrical noise if that leg has a current maximum, or a current minimum on it, along the portion of the antenna closest to the power lines? You can e-m

[Elecraft] [K3] 4.66 clock bug

2013-04-06 Thread Al Lorona
With firmware 4.66, upon initial power up my clock was several seconds behind (as shown by the DISP button), even though I had set it only 12 hours ago. I went into the CONFIG menu to adjust the clock, but as soon as I rotated to the TIME parameter the clock apparently adjusted itself (gained b

Re: [Elecraft] K3 mods by I7SWX

2013-04-28 Thread Al Lorona
I read the whole thing, too. It appears that the improvements are measurable... the only question is, "Is it worth the trouble?" It is obviously an awful lot of work. Another question one must answer is, "Am I willing to accept the decrease in my K3's resale value?" after you are done cutting

Re: [Elecraft] TS-990

2013-06-05 Thread Al Lorona
The weight of rigs from Japan has more to do with the choice of steel for the chassis instead of aluminum, and certainly the size of the TS-990 is the right size for many people. But another observation is that when you look at the schematic diagrams of Japanese rigs they are unbelievably compli

Re: [Elecraft] K3 Field Day tips (extending battery life, antennas, etc.)

2013-06-18 Thread Al Lorona
To add to this: In the case where you have a horizontally-polarized antenna and a vertical, it might feel like the vertical should be placed off the end of the dipole, but in fact that's where vertically-polarized response of the dipole is maximum, so the vertical should actually be placed bro

Re: [Elecraft] K3-schematic and 2-pole crystal-filter

2013-07-01 Thread Al Lorona
Hi, Jerry, That 2-pole filter is probably there to eliminate any wideband noise that might be generated in the 1st IF amp. It's a good receiver design technique. R, Al  W6LX > > From: Jerome Sodus >To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net >Sent: Saturday, June 29, 201

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