[Elecraft] [K3] Transmitter Calibration Procedure

[Mike Reublin]

Mike,

I thought I'd re-do my calibration. It took a LOT of turns to get from 4 watts to 5 watts on the Bird. I don't have a CONFIG:WTMR HP, only LP. I do have the 100W PA.

73, Mike NF4L

On Nov 10, 2012, at 8:09 AM, Mike Harris <mike.harris at cwimail.fk> wrote:

> 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
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