[Elecraft] K3:Erratic CW keying

[Edward R Cole]

I encountered an issue with remote keying my K3 via the straight key 
jack today.  After keying up for a test carrier and releasing the KEY 
line the radio repeatedly keyed up at about 2x per second for 
anywhere from three to ten times before stopping: 
kerchunk-kerchunk-kerchunk-kerchunk ...

I had a switch at the tower connected with two wires to the CW KEY 
jack in the house about 120-feet away.  Shorting the leads at the 
back of the K3 caused the same thing.  Figuring it might have 
something to do with my inhibit control I unplugged the connection to 
the ACC jack and also reset CONFIG: INH to OFF.  Still the same 
behavior so it had nothing to do with Inhibit.

Worrying that rapid TR keying might cause failure to my tower-mounted 
preamp, I tried using a different mode than CW.  Keying in USB and 
FM  showed normal TR action.  I finally figured I could remotely use 
the KEY IN jack to activate PTT in FM mode for keying a test carrier 
while out at the tower.  That worked fine.

Later this evening I restored connection of my CW straight key to the 
K3 and saw none of the issues seen earlier.  Since CW requires use of 
VOX I'm wondering if maybe the long key line introduced RFI into the 
CW KEY jack?  I was testing with 50w at 2m.  So curious if anyone has 
had similar experience with K3 acting up this way in CW mode.  No I 
was not jacked into the paddle jack.  I even adjusted CW speed with 
no affect (which one would expect using the straight key jack).

Is there a way to run CW without using VOX?  BTW I went thru all of 
the CONFIG settings to confirm they were in normal settings.  Mostly 
curious what was happening now that I have a work-around for remotely 
testing (SWR) while at the tower (using FM and KEY IN).

73, Ed - KL7UW
http://www.kl7uw.com
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