[Elecraft] K3 #1195 at Field Day
Nick-WA5BDU
nick-wa5bdu at suddenlink.net
Mon Jun 29 19:57:53 EDT 2009
This K3 is 25 serial number units and 25 miles from the K3 Brad posted
about earlier. So it was pretty hot here too. Supposedly a record
temperature for the date, last set in 1952. That's one Field Day record
I didn't want to set.
I kept moving equipment around on my table to keep direct sun off the K3
and laptop. I was afraid to even look at the heat sink and FP temperatures.
My K3 survived and showed no heat related issues even though I kept it
QSOing or CQing at 100W CW for long periods. The main issue I had was
strong RF fields, and I've had that about every FD regardless of rig.
It was more an N1MM thing, as N1MM would hang up with key down if I
tried to send from the log. Well, laptop thing really. So I did most
of my sending with the paddle, which I didn't really mind since I miss
using my paddle in some of these contests.
One surprising thing though was that the K3's internal memory keyer
would stick too. That didn't make any sense since I was using the
paddle (K3 internal keyer) with no issues. The rig would lock into
transmit mode with sidetone ON, but no RF output. Eventually I fixed
the USB to serial dongle with three split ferrites, two passes each, and
the N1MM plus the K3's memory keyer began working fine. Go figure.
I had the same issue with not enough audio. I blamed it on the fact
that I was using a pair of small stereo speakers, and hi-fi speakers can
be pretty inefficient. I also went to the extreme of making sure the
gain setting was on high. I used the internal speaker some and got
plenty of volume, but it's pretty raspy, especially under FD pileup
conditions. I think too that under open air outside conditions, you
want more audio than you need in a small room. I always had the
headphones handy when needed though.
The overall performance of the rig under crowded conditions was very
good. I have both the 400 Hz and 200 Hz filters and previously didn't
think the 200 had much value to me, but it proved useful in digging out
weak ones and also when S&Ping through crowded band segments.
We had two CW ops at our site. I did 14 hours and the other fellow did
10 and we wound up with 761 Qs and 74 of 80 sections (even though they
don't count). The antenna we used was a 180 foot dipole, center at 45
feet or so with 450 ohm line feeder through a Johnson Matchbox on all
bands.
Oh yeah, other evidence of RF problems, I got shocked once touching the
brass base of my paddle and again grabbing a knob on the K3. That
surprised me until I saw that the path was shaft thru set screw to finger.
73--Nick, WA5BDU
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