[Elecraft] K3 QRPp

[Gary Smith]

Lyle & Dave,

Thank you so much for your explanations. 

I realize all the efforts I have put in towards my 150 meter radial 
field had to work in my favor. I am on the ocean and my back yard is 
a salt water marsh. I use the first tall tree at the marsh's edge as 
the support for my 160 meter inverted-L. It is electrically long and 
I use doorknobs at the feed point to give me a 1:1 match at 1.830. 

I have 60 some 130' radials laid out with 1/2 of them on the marsh 
and the rest on the bog beside it. I have the same kind of L attached 
to the radial plate for 80M and in the center of the plate is 
attached a butternut HF9V. The get selected via an Ameritron remote 
coax switch. FWIW, I do extremely well on low bands with this for I'm 
forever hearing in contests how powerful my signal is yet I always 
adhere to less than 1500W out. CW I set at around 1,100 watts out in 
a contest just so I know my score is guaranteed to be legit.

Several days ago I worked at the K3 stated 100mw level and was amazed 
by how many replies I was able to get on 160M & 80M. I had started 
out at 5W and gotten several replies and then when I received a 579 
from Wisconsin on 160, I dropped to the lowest the scale offered at 
100mw and he gave me a 459. I called more CQs at 100mw and worked a 
NC, IA and MI back to back, to back. I wanted to go lower and try 
10mw, even 1mw if possible but was not sure how to do this without 
possibly transmitting into the wrong output.

I am on the road at the moment but will try your suggestions when I 
get back.

Amazing what an advantageous antenna system will do. I entered the 
SSB contest for two hours last night just to give people some 
contacts/multipliers. The C6 I worked said he'd heard me earlier and 
took the time to tell me several sentences worth how powerful my 
signal was. The same for several VE stations and one from WV. I know 
the antenna is big in those reports but I also wonder how much using 
the K3 with it's compression played a part as well?

Gary
KA1J

> > If I want to operate at say, 1 watt I believe all I have to do is 
> > adjust the power out and it will go from 100mw to 120W using the main 
> > antenna 1 or 2.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > If that is true, how does one select and use less that that? 
> 
> Set up the transverter band per page 39 in the manual (latest rev D-2).
> 
> Use the XVTR OUT connector for the Tx output.
> 
> Be sure to run the transmit calibrations routine from the K3 Utility for 
> the milliwatt output.  See the help in K3 Utility for details.
> 
> If you want to force the radio to use milliwatt level output on the KXV3 
> without first setting up a transverter band, then set CONFIG:KXV3 TEST. 
>   See page 49.
> 73,
> 
> Lyle KK7P
>