[Elecraft] 2 different 144MHz transveters and CAT selection

[Geert Jan de Groot]

> I have an unusual situation in that I have 2 different 2m transverters
> attached to my K3S.
> One system is a dual channel ME2T-XP and uses the SUB RX, this is only used
> for EME and it designated XV1.
> The second is used on tropo/terrestrial DX and contests and is an
> ME2T-ProII, this is XV2.
> 
> If I use WSJT-X and use CAT I have a problem in that a CAT selection for
> 144MHz always chooses XV1 which is not what I want at all most of the time.
> There are gain and LO offset configurations that mean that using a switch in
> the IF is not ideal.
> 
> Currently my solution is to set the RF frequency for XV1 to 70 MHz
> temporarily which always confuses me when I want to go on 2m EME. What would
> be ideal would be some way of setting the CAT XV priority from the front
> panel. I think that this must be a firmware update, its an easy one but of
> course would be low down the list.

Using a K3 for QO100 operation, I set the display to 89.xxxx MHz, not 
10489.xxxx MHz. Easier to type, and the frequency display doesn't get 
clobbered by useless digits. If I go to fine tune mode, the frequency 
still fits on the display.

In similar vein, you could consider defining one of the transverters as 
44.xxx MHz instead of 144.xxx MHz. I expect CAT will work then?

But, I have my gripes with K3 and transverters.
The K3 firmware is buggy: if you only define transverter bands to work 
on and switch off the HF bands, then the band-up and band-down switch 
behaves strange, selecting bands that I disabled (80m and 10m, both 
disabled). It should switch between transverter bands but doesn't.
I reported this quite a while back but no planning was given to fix this 
(a trivial fix, especially useful for people using transverters)
I wonder if Elecraft will ever fix this (given that all effort is now on 
K4), and frankly this doesn't bode well for the K4: if there is a K5, 
will the K4 stop getting fixes?

Also, given that Elecraft stopped making transverters a long time ago, 
I'm hoping they will make the contents of U4 of the XV series available. 
This would allow my transverters to talk to the K3 using the AUX bus, 
and I can think of a few ways where this would improve integration.

I've considered reverse-engineering but apart from Elecraft probably 
frowning on that, haven't had the time (yet). But, don't knock it, this 
is how the DSP option became available for the K2...

73,

Geert Jan PE1HZG