[Elecraft] [OT] The Thread of all Threads

[Al Lorona]

This morning I got up and turned on the K3. I was shocked to find RFI from my 
Eveready flashlight on 7040, a birdie on 7160.1850192827354637, and with the 
noise blanker on I could hear splatter from my nextdoor neighbor's kilowatt at 
the bottom of the band. So I decided to update the firmware.

The K3 locked up during the update. I had to power cycle everything four times. 
After the update, I could swear that the AFX started acting differently than 
before the update. Somebody told me it was my AGC settings. I started to try to 
measure the AGC response when I noticed that my filters were shifted and tilted. 
I phoned Inrad and exchanged my filters ten or eleven times until I got one that 
was flat with zero frequency shift.

Something was still bothering me, so I hooked up my spectrum analyzer. Aha! 
Audio artifacts! These were solved easily by purchasing a pair of $9.95 
headphones at Pic 'n' Save.

While troubleshooting this, I happened to notice that my 
RS232-to-USB-to-waveguide-to-banana plugs-to-RS232 adapter was acting up. A 
search of the archives told me that the driver and the chips used in this 
adapter were the wrong kind. Why in the world can't the K3 have an X-band horn 
in the back instead of that antiquated serial connector?

When I tried to transmit, the guys on the net complained about the K3's key 
clicks, and its ATU wouldn't tune my 0.1 -j 4570 ohm antenna impedance properly. 
However, when I boosted the lower two TX EQ bands by +16 dB these problems 
seemed to go away. Well, that, and re-writing the K3's firmware to implement a 
windowing function that takes 2 GB of external memory to implement.

With some of this extra memory I wrote a Yaesu receiver personality that makes 
my K3 distort exactly like my old FT-757. It's just like having that rig back in 
the shack.

During this testing, I did have some trouble with FSK-D VOX without QSK in 
DATA-A Dual PB AFX BIN TEXT DEC NR 1-4 mode, but switching to AFSK with APF, PTT 
DVR N1MM through the soundcard with DTR always on and CONFIG:MON turned down 
seemed to help. However, I plan to ask Wayne for a high-priority firmware update 
to do this automatically.

(By the way, it's a good thing I have this short call sign... I can say my call 
15 times in one ten second DVR memory! Thank goodness for the vanity call sign 
system.)

I *think* everything's okay now except for there's still something wrong with 
the receiver which I can't quite pinpoint, and I know it couldn't possibly be 
related to all of those years touring with The Who and standing in front of 
their amplifiers night after night.

Happy Holidays,

Al  W6LX