[Elecraft] Some thoughts on the K3 as anemergencycommunications station

[Ian White GM3SEK]

Ken Kopp wrote:
>
>There's often a laptop along in many situations involving multiple 
>operators ... FD, contests, etc.  When I have a guest OP I save my K3's 
>"personality" to a file so it can be restored easily.  This is usually 
>faster than figuring out what the curious or harried OP has done, 
>especially at 3 AM when rousted out of bed with a "Your radio's quit 
>working".
>

The K3 owner should never NEED to be rousted out of bed... but it 
certainly does happen, because the K3 offers so many accidental ways to 
bring the whole rig to a dead stop.

This has happened to me several times (although not always literally 
getting me out of bed). I am never grouchy about it... just sad for the 
reputation of the K3.

A few weeks ago I offered a specification for a "protected mode" that 
would greatly reduce the risks of that happening. The specification was 
written in the format of the User Manual:

"CONFIG:HOLDDLY. Increases the HOLD time required to activate secondary 
functions of push buttons and knobs.  Minimum (and default) is 0.5 
seconds, which can be adjusted to longer times using the VFO B knob. 
Beyond that general setting, extra-long HOLD times can be applied to the 
BAND and MODE rocker buttons: tap [1] to require a 50% longer HOLD time 
than the general setting; tap [2] to require 100% longer; tap [0] to 
reset BAND and MODE buttons to the same HOLD time as all others 
(default).

For further protection against accidental activation of HOLD functions, 
see CONFIG:SW TONE and CONFIG:PWR SET (tap [1] to lock)."

These proposed functions have been designed to have no effect on the 
K3's existing button responses unless options are deliberately selected.


I believe Wayne was on vacation when this topic was previously 
discussed. Any comments or signs of action, please?



-- 

73 from Ian GM3SEK
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek