[Elecraft] K3 FW 1.87 problem

[G4ILO]

John Reiser-3 wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Since getting my K3 # 384 in mid February, I have become an avid fan of
> PSK31 and RTTY.  In my 50 years as a ham, I never used the digital modes
> before I got the K3.
> 
> Everything worked fine for me until I updated to version 1.87 this
> morning.
> 
> As usual, I set the windows XP volume control (audio out) slider to half
> way.  I set the line control on the K3 to 2.  For PSK31 I set the power
> out to 25 watts.  I use the Digipan software and DATA  A for PSK31. For
> RTTY I use the MMTTY software and MFSK A.  
> 
> With that setup and FW v. 1.78 I would have no bars showing for ALC (as it
> should be for digital modes) and 3-4 bars showing for RF out (25-30
> watts).  For RTTY I had used 100 watts out with the same line level
> setting of 2.
> 
> I had been very successful in making over 200 digital QSOs in 86 countries
> in a little over two months.
> 
> Now with FW v. 1.87, I find that I get 5 bars of ALC with a line-in level
> setting of 2.  And, I get virtually no RF output (1 bar) unless I set the
> RF out asked-for to 50 watts.  At the 50 watt-asked  setting I get about
> 25 watts out (with more heat).  If I drop the line-in level to 1, I get no
> ALC bars and also I get no RF out at any power-asked setting.  I haven't
> tried RTTY yet with v. 1.87, but it is sure to be messed up too.
> 
> My conclusion is that while 1.87 contains a lot of good fixes, in the
> process the ALC behavior with respect to digital modes got broken.
> 
> Also, we really need more resolution for the line-in level control.  With
> v.1.87 it is essentially an on-off switch that goes from 0 to 5 bars on
> the ALC meter as one tunes between 1 an 2.
> 
> I'm just reporting my experiences with the new FW for what they are worth. 
> I know all these things will get fixed in time.  Meanwhile, I may have to
> fall back to 1.78.
> 
> Many thanks and 73,
> 
> John, W2GW
> 
> 
Hi John.

It seems to me that you are experiencing something similar to the problems I
have reported using DATA A mode.

First of all, you *should* set the audio input to give 4 or 5 bars of ALC.
Someone recently posted a link to a post by Lyle made a few days ago where
he explains that in DATA A mode this is not actually measuring ALC at all. 4
bars is apparently the correct level, but I find it more stable with 5.

However, despite that I'm currently getting about half the requested power
out when transmitting a pure tuning tone.

I actually have the audio output slider on the computer set on about the
second notch up from the bottom, which is pretty low. My LINE level is set
to 36 to get the 5 bars of "ALC" as suggested above. If you only need LINE=2
then your sound card must be more powerful than most, and you'd probably
benefit from putting a resistive attenuator in the output.

-----
Julian, G4ILO  K3 s/n: 222 K2 s/n: 392
G4ILO's Shack: www.g4ilo.com
Zerobeat Ham Forums: www.zerobeat.net/smf
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