[Elecraft] [acom-list] Re: Elecraft K3 and ACOM 2000A

[Larry Phipps]

LP-Bridge blocks commands that it polls itself to eliminate redundancy. 
Especially with the K3, over-poling creates other problems. Since 
LP-Bridge defaults to poling for the most common commands, including VFO 
A and B frequencies, 5 times a second, I don't see how the amp can miss 
a response. The responses are being sent by the K3 5 times per second. 
There is something else going on. As a workaround, Nick, have you tried 
feeding the amp with one of the Output ports in LP-Bridge? These outputs 
only send VFO data, and only for the transmit VFO. It is set to Kenwood 
format and 4800 baud to be broadly compatible with amps, tuners and 
SteppIR. It also adds hysteresis to eliminate unnecessary retuning of 
SteppIR antennas near a segment edge.

Larry N8LP


On 9/14/2014 7:50 AM, elecraft-request at mailman.qth.net wrote:
> Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 13:26:29 -0400
> From: "Joe Subich, W4TV"<lists at subich.com>
> To: Nick - VE3EY<nick.ve3ey at gmail.com>, Dick Dievendorff
> 	<dick at elecraft.com>
> Cc: Elecraft<elecraft at mailman.qth.net>, ACOM group
> 	<acom-list at yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] [acom-list] Re: Elecraft K3 and ACOM 2000A
> Message-ID:<54147E45.1000204 at subich.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
>> >In my case LP-Bridge seems to be confusing the amp but I can't tell
>> >why. LP-Bridge does read everything correctly from the K3 and
>> >Win-Test works perfectly along with it.
> LP-Bridge acts as a*proxy*  - polling from Win-Test and other programs
> is answered by LP-Bridge and*not passed on to the rig*.  Thus, any
> hardware that relies on the answers to polling from the rig does not
> see any response.  Because LP-Pan blocks the majority of polls to the
> rig, the 2000, SteppIR and other similar hardware never gets a chance
> to recover when they miss an update as they would with a logger that
> polls for frequency and mode two or three times per second.
>
> 73,
>
>      ... Joe, W4TV
>
>
> On 2014-09-13 12:59 PM, Nick - VE3EY wrote:
>> >Hi Dick and Val
>> >Thanks for sharing this valuable info with the group.
>> >
>> >Similar to Bill, W6WRT after I fixed my CAT cable to exclude TXD line my
>> >entire setup started working but later on I realized it wasn't working
>> >reliably. On some occasions,  amp would not detect the frequency change
>> >until after I started spinning the VFO knob.  This was while I had the
>> >Win-Test logging program running and polling my K3.  Autonfo on my K3 is
>> >set to "nor".
>> >
>> >On some bands the amp refused to follow the frequency.   For example, I
>> >would switch the radio to 20 meters but the amp for some reason thought it
>> >was still on 15.   If I turn the CAT off on the Acom's RCU unit and
>> >transmit some RF, the amp would correctly switch to 20 and tune up.
>> >Without changing anything else and while the K3 and Win-Test were still on
>> >20m, if I turn the on the CAT on the RCU unit, the amp would jump back on
>> >15m for some reason.
>> >
>> >The whole thing started working reliably after I took LP Bridge out of the
>> >picture.   In Win-Test if I define the radio on the real COM port the PC is
>> >connected to the K3 and change the pooling from "Auto" to 300msec the amp
>> >works well.   I changed the band numerous times and Acom followed without a
>> >hitch.
>> >
>> >In my case LP-Bridge seems to be confusing the amp but I can't tell why.
>> >LP-Bridge does read everything correctly from the  K3 and Win-Test works
>> >perfectly along with it.
>> >
>> >73,  Nick
>> >ve3ey