[Elecraft] The ins and outs of PSK on the K3?

[Don Wilhelm]

Tom,

There is nothing wrong with the way you are doing it - and works well 
for anyone having a panadapter display to work with (P3 or LP-Pan)  With 
that you can narrow up the filters and eliminate interference.
If you do it that way (tune the K3 to the signal desired rather than 
clicking on a waterfall), then you may want to investigate using the K3 
Utility terminal rather than DM780 if all you want to decode is PSK31 or 
RTTY, or you might want to investigate Fldigi and give the K3 polling 
(and your computer reaources) a rest.

OTOH, there is a convience to using that full SSB bandwidth (but in DATA 
A submode) along with a waterfall display.  Click on a signal on the 
waterfall, the K3 frequency does not change, but the PSK31 application 
shows you the frequency of the signal.  Yes, using that wide bandwidth, 
you would want to turn AGC off, or if that is not desirable, turn the RF 
gain down as required - the soundcard application filters are plenty 
good, but strong signals within the bandpass will pump the AGC and 
change the gain of the receiver.  One problem with HRD/DM780 is that it 
does not properly recognize the K3 data submodes and will force your K3 
to USB if you allow it to do whatever it wants - you can change the mode 
manually to DATA A, but that is a pain.  I gave up on HRD for exactly 
that reason.  I use Fldigi with RigCAT selected.

73,
Don W3FPR.

On 6/26/2012 8:36 PM, tomb18 wrote:
> I have been running PSK for a couple of months now on the K3 and am wondering
> if I am using it in the best way.
> I am using DM780 that comes with Ham Radio Deluxe and I usually set the K3
> in USB and pick the stations from the waterfall. I also have a P3. Up until
> now, I have been using the 2.8 KHz filter setting and have had AGC on.  It
> always seemed that there were two flaws in this:  One was that it was not
> easy to pick the actual signal using the P3 markers, you always were using
> the USB lower frequency point that was some number of hz away from the
> signal.  The second was how do you get an actual frequency for the signal
> instead of just 14.070 (20M)?  Sometimes you can see stations spotted at
> 14.072 but finding it was always a search of spots one by one.
>
>
> Today I played around a bit.  For one, I used the manual notch filter to
> remove a really strong signal.  I turned of AGC. This works well.  I also
> set the radio in DATA mode instead of USB.  The nice thing about this, is
> that I can use the P3 with a +/- 2 KHz span, and see all of the signals in
> the usual PSK range, but now I can click on one I see, and it will actually
> center it in the passband and give me a frequency readout that seems better
> than the standard 14.070 for 20m.  Furthermore, I can use a narrower filter
> and the reception seems much better and the decoding more accurate.
>
> So my question is, is my new found way of using the K3 a better way and
> possibly the best?
> Thanks for any insight.
> Tom VA2FSQ
>
>
>
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