[Elecraft] SSB low output

[Brian Mury]

On Sun, 2004-21-11 at 17:45 -0500, W3FPR - Don Wilhelm wrote: 
> Have you checked things on the KSB2 - particularly the resistors (RP5 too) 
> and the soldering of the Speech processor/compressor chip.  While the HC4/5 
> elements are about 10 dB less than most other mics, you ahould be able to 
> make up for that with the SSBA = 3 and SSBC = 2-1 pr 3-1.
> 
> It does sound like you have a bad connection somewhere.

Nah - I'm too good a builder for that to happen! ;-)

Ok, so I pulled the KSB2 out to take a look anyway (helps to remove the
screw first!). Looked over the bottom for solder joints. Everything
looked good. Turned it over and started looking at the top for parts
placement when I noticed pin 1 of the P1 connector was not soldered.
Oops! Fixed that - but then looked at the schematic and noticed that it
doesn't seem to be used by the KSB2 anyway (it's the 8R signal).

I stuck it back in the K2 anyway to see what happens. I was plugging the
KPA100 back in when I saw that the coax shield had pulled out of the AUX
RF connector, so I fixed that too.

It seems to be working ok now. I'm not sure when the AUX RF connection
got broken, but it seems strange that I would get the full 100W out with
a whistle or on CW (which I was) if it was broken.

One more thing I just noticed while writing this. If I go into the menu
and change the gain or compression settings, I can exit the menu by
pressing the PTT, but the new setting DOES NOT take effect! This seems
to work ok for other menu items (I haven't tested all of them). I'd
gotten into the lazy habit of changing a setting, then just stepping on
the footswitch and talking to try out the new setting. The lesson here
is don't be lazy! :-)

I'm still not getting quite as much mic gain as I would like, but I've
got a fairly soft voice. I may still build that external preamp down the
road. The important thing is it's working. Too late for sweepstakes,
unfortunately...

-- 
73, Brian
VE7NGR