[Elecraft] KAT500 Utility Question: Idle Sleep

[James Bennett]

I've got a K3/KAT500/KPA500 system, along with a KX3.

In the past I was able to power on the KAT500 whenever I wanted, irregardless of the power being on or off for the K3. This was useful for the occasional times I wanted to have the KX3 drive the KPA500 and the KAT500. A week or so ago I made some changes to my main antenna system and wanted to "re-train" the KAT500. So, I brought up the KAT500 Utility (v1.14.2.1 - Mac OS X) and cleared it's memories. While I had the utility up I was looking at a couple other things, as it had been a while since I'd been in this program. I noticed that in the Configuration there is a tab called "Idle Sleep". This had been unchecked, but after reading what the text said, I thought it would be good to have it turned on. Well, it appears that this has had the unwanted effect of my not being able to turn on the KAT500 unless the K3 is powered on first. Is this normal? I thought that the KAT500 needed to be powered on BEFORE the K3???

As a side note, that Idle Sleep page says "See Help and the KAT500 Serial Command Reference for more detail". Well, I opened up the Help and found very little regarding this option - pretty much a repeat of what is in the utility itself.

Jim / W6JHB