[Elecraft] [K3] Transmitter Calibration Procedure

[Mike Harris]

The procedure in the handbook is incomplete and misleading.  This has 
been mentioned before.

First set CONFIG: TUN PWR to nor with the VFO A knob.
Next follow the procedure.

When you get to "Hold TUNE" etc you will notice that the display changes 
from the CONFIG:WMTR display to what looks like the normal TUNE display 
and you lose the parameter reading.  At this point you can still turn 
the VFO A knob and the output power will change and you can match it to 
your external LP-100.  When you exit TUNE you will note that the 
parameter value has probably changed.

Regards,

Mike VP8NO


On 09/11/2012 21:09, Randy Farmer wrote:
> During SS I noticed that my K3 transmitter seemed to be in need of
> calibration, as the output power measured by my LP-100A (which I trust)
> seemed to be a bit higher than expected from the radio's setting and I
> was also observing some power "creep".
>
> This afternoon I finally got an opportunity to look into this and indeed
> the transmit output is slightly high. 5W setting produces about 5.7W and
> 50W setting produces around 60-62 watts. I used the K3 utility to do a
> TX gain calibration and this seemed to only level the power on a band to
> band basis. 50W requested now gets me about 62W on every band.
>
> It looks as if the calibration is (understandably) using the internal
> wattmeter to set the power. Therefore, I concluded that I needed to do
> the wattmeter calibration first to see if that corrected the power set
> error. Unfortunately, the procedure in the manual doesn't seem to work.
> Firstly, it says something about calibrating in Tune mode. I tried doing
> the cal with both the front panel Power set to 5W and 50W and with the
> Tune power set to these values. The procedure tells me to hold the Tune
> button in the adjust menu and appears to say I should be able to adjust
> the output power with the VFO A knob. This doesn't work. As soon as the
> Tune button is held the rig drops out of Menu display and I just get the
> normal Tune mode behavior.
>
> Am I reading the instructions wrong? They seem pretty ambiguous to me,
> and no variant of what I think they could say seems to work. Has anyone
> successfully done a TX Cal in the field? If so, how did you proceed?
>
> 73...
> Randy, W8FN