[Elecraft] K3 spurious

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

I have # 1239. This happened to me the first time I got in a contest
from home with the K3.  I usually don't bother using headphones unless
there are other ops around. I got called down on the air by a European
station that was up 500 Hz on 20m at the height of the opening.  I was
running 1500 watts. When he called me, his signal was 20 over.  The
unwanted signal was down 44 db (later measurement).  Assuming I was as
loud to him as he was to me, that would make my signal something like
S5 over there.

The problem of course was that the unwanted signal was stable, clean,
well keyed, and very discrete, not spread out like phase noise.

I had the monitor turned up enough to make it comfortable to use the
internal keyer.   Seems I was driving the op up 500 Hz.  I reported it
back then.  The answer was that there was an engineer assigned to it.

But I also got dual external speakers set up to use AFX.  Therefore
the internal speaker was no longer used. Always headphones at the
multi's.  So never an issue.

Since I don't customarily bang things off my K3, microphonics were not
a problem.

Also, I learned that if I use the tones from CW keyers driven by MM
over Winkey and run the paddle leads there instead I don't have the
processing delay between pressing paddle and the baud, and I key more
accurately.  So now at home I don't use the monitor either.

Out of sight, out of mind.  This is probably why it hasn't garnered
more attention.

Also I suspect that Wayne is paying more attention to the nits and
gnats that seem to be the gist of typical complaints, All the Princess
and the Pea kinds of audio complaints. Or the texture of the paint on
panels.  What happens when you expand the customer base beyond mojo
drinking K2 kit builders, and some buy the radio as a fashion
accessory.

Wrapping the VCO in a foam that is in turn held by a holder would do
it, but all the solutions are cramped by the tight spaces in there,
and frankly I rather like the small size of all that functionality.
It's likely not nearly so simple as it appears from this distance. It
may have a magnetic component.

73, Guy.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 8:17 AM, Don Wilhelm <w3fpr at embarqmail.com> wrote:
> Jim,
> Can you be specific about your perception that there are a "lot of
> workarounds".  I consider this to be the only one.
> There are enhancements being worked on - ideas that have mainly come
> from requests on this reflector, but those are not hardware related like
> this one seems to be.
>
> I wonder why  this has not been seen before - surely many have used the
> internal speaker over the past 3 years, but then again, perhaps not
> often, I use external speakers, and many use headphones.
>
> 73,
> Don W3FPR
>
>
> Jan Erik Holm wrote:
>> There sure are a lot of workarounds with the K3, the
>> list is quite long by now.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
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