[Elecraft] K3 FSK RTTY Problems

[Gordon LaPoint]

Rich, and others on the list,
     Thanks for all of the suggestions.   I got the system working.   
The problem was the pitch setting.  While in FSK D If you hold the Pitch 
button the K3 shows the current pitch, (2125-170) is what was showing.   
I changed it to low tones (915-170) and back to 2125.  That fixed it!  I 
now have working FSK-D mode again.  I'm not sure what was going on, but 
the pitch was at some value of ~200hz, not 2125.  Resetting the pitch 
fixed it.  So for future reference, don't believe the display, change it 
and then set it back to what you want!!  I was hearing a tone of about 
200 hz when going into tx, but was hearing the 2125 when I pressed the 
Pitch button.  Now I hear a tone of 2125 and diddles when I use the 
software to send something.

Thanks to all for the suggestions,

Gordon - N1MGO

On 11/9/2015 3:28 PM, Richard Ferch wrote:
> Just a thought - is there any chance your K3 is not in FSK D, but in 
> some other Data sub-mode?
>
> When I put my K3 into FSK D and press the XMIT button, I hear a 
> sidetone in my headphones that is identical to the tone I hear when I 
> press the PITCH button. (That's assuming I don't have the K3's MON 
> level set to zero.) The pitch of the sidetone is affected by the PITCH 
> setting, but nothing else I adjust, including filter settings and 
> XIT/RIT, seems to have any effect on it.
>
> In PSK D, the sidetone is a PSK idle signal at 1000 Hz. In AFSK A and 
> DATA A, there is no sidetone unless there is audio getting into the 
> radio (e.g. from the Line In connector).
>
> It has been years since I used FSK. I switched to AFSK soon after I 
> got my K3, as soon as I realized that the K3's transmitted signal was 
> cleaner in AFSK than in FSK. However, back when I did use FSK, when 
> there was a keying input connected to the ACC connector sending 
> diddles to the radio I heard diddles in the monitor, the same as I 
> would in AFSK where the input to the radio actually is a diddling 
> audio tone.
>
> If you are hearing a 200 Hz tone (lower pitched than even the lowest 
> possible CW sidetone) with the radio transmitting in FSK D, there is 
> something very peculiar going on; that's not the way it is supposed to 
> work.
>
> If you are hearing a steady tone in the monitor at the Pitch frequency 
> with no diddling, then either the software is not generating a keying 
> output (MMTTY set up for AFSK instead of FSK, for example), or the 
> connection to the ACC connector is broken.
>
> You can use the K3 Utility to check some of this. Start the Utility 
> up, choose the Terminal tab, select RTTY, put the K3 into FSK D, type 
> something into the lower pane near the bottom of the window, press 
> Ctrl+T or click on the Transmit button, and you should hear something 
> that is mostly at 2295 Hz (the space tone), with diddles and text 
> characters causing it to diddle back to 2125 Hz (the Pitch setting). 
> If that works, then the problem is likely somewhere outside the area 
> that the Utility tests.
>
> You can test for a problem in the K3's internal wiring to the ACC 
> connector by shorting pin 1 to pin 5 on the ACC connector to see if 
> that causes the sidetone to shift frequency. If that works properly 
> but you are not getting the same frequency shift when you try to use 
> your RTTY software, then the problem is upstream - in your cable or in 
> the configuration of the software you are using for FSK.
>
> 73,
> Rich VE3KI
>
>
> On 2015-11-09 12:05 PM, Gordon LaPoint wrote:
>> Rich,
>>       Sorry, I am going by the monitor tone.  I need to check the actual
>> rf on another radio and see if the Mark is really at 200hz offset or at
>> 2.1Khz like it should be ( I use high tones from mmtty or 2tone)
>> the AFSK A is working normal.  I did not hear any shift using FSK D.
>>      I normally use FSK D, and the "pitch" setting was still correct, is
>> there another setting that affects the pitch?
>>
>>
>>     Gordon - N1MGO
>>
>> On 11/09/2015 11:29 AM, Richard Ferch wrote:
>>> Gordon,
>>>
>>> It's not clear what you mean. The mark output from the radio is at RF,
>>> not at either 2 kHz or 200 Hz. Do you mean the audio monitor tone you
>>> hear from the K3, or are you monitoring in some other way?
>>>
>>> In FSK D (and also in AFSK A), the K3's dial displays the actual Mark
>>> frequency as transmitted. If you are monitoring via an external
>>> receiver, the two RTTY frequencies should be at the K3's dial
>>> frequency (mark) and at a frequency 170 Hz lower (space).
>>>
>>> The audio monitor tone from the K3 should be at the K3's Pitch
>>> setting. If it isn't, that would seem to point to something odd in the
>>> monitor, which does not necessarily mean there is anything wrong with
>>> the actual transmitted RF.
>>>
>>> 73,
>>> Rich VE3KI
>>>
>>> N1MGO wrote:
>>>
>>>>      I normally use MMTTY, with DXLabs. That is not the problem, the
>>>> Mark output of the radio is at ~200hz, NOT 2Khz as normal, and can not
>>>> tell if the space is there or not, due to the super low frequency 
>>>> offset
>>>> from the dial frequency.   I'm setup for SO2V operation with Writelog,
>>>> that also has the problem.  I did check for port conflicts and did not
>>>> find any.
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>>
>>