[Elecraft] footswitch and amp

[Bill K9YEQ]

I have the Heil foot switch and I have two cables.  One for keying the Radio
and the other for the amp.  The purpose as I understood the use was a delay
between keying both.  I have the black going to the Radio, not the red.  I
use a cable from the K3  to my W2 and then a cable from the W2 to my amp.
The W2 sensor is after the amp and will shut down my amp if the SWR is too
high.

73,
Bill
K9YEQ


-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Jack Berry
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2012 3:55 PM
To: ke4d at att.net; Elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] footswitch and amp

I can only guess that the red RCA from your foot switch is dead but you
could determine that with an ohm meter. It should work as described.

KE4D has the more elegant solution, I just migrated all my cables from the
old Kenwood when my K3 arrived and have been too busy operating to integrate
all the
K3 features into my station. In our case we'll have a red cable to coil up
at the foot switch.

Jack - WE5ST




________________________________
From: "ke4d at att.net" <ke4d at att.net>
To: Elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Sent: Sun, February 5, 2012 3:18:26 PM
Subject: [Elecraft] footswitch and amp

So, then, this begs a question. I have a K3 with an Ameritron AL-811H. 
I key the K3 with a Heil foot switch connected to a Heil ProSet 5. When I
tried keying my amp off the red cable on the foot switch, I didn't get any
amp keying. When I connected an RCA phono cable between the K3's key out
jack and the amp's relay, everything works fine and dandy. Is there some
setting on the K3 I missed to allow the amp to key from the foot switch
instead of from the rig's TX?

Thanks and 73,

Ian Kahn, KM4IK
Roswell, GA


I'm not sure why you want to key the amp instead of the rig.  I ran an 811H
for years with my Icom 746 Pro and my K2s with a footswitch to the radio
connected to my ProSet 5.. Same way I now run my K2 and my KPA500.  Since I
don't have a
K3 (yet) I guess I might be missing something but since the amp, whether the
811H or KPA500 doesn't key until the radio does, I wouldn't think this would
be an issue.  And, I'm not sure how it would work keying the amp without the
radio. 
Maybe because the KPA500 and K3 are basically symbiotic its not an issue but
I certainly wouldn't have been able to use the IC 746 Pro or my K2 by keying
the amp.  What am I missing?

John KE4D