Elecraft K3 filters...AGAIN!!!

All done... an event worth celebrating

In my last post after installing the general coverage receiver in my K3 and all was

Before the change

After the change

Installing Elecraft's general coverage option

KBPF3 board

The mess

About 2 weeks ago I emailed my order into Elecraft for the KBPF3 general coverage board. It arrived on Thursday and was placed off to the side until Saturday. I did my reading to familiarize myself with the installation. It seems I was not familiar enough as I made an amateur mistake but more on that later. My K3 has the sub-receiver installed so I have the choice of putting the general coverage unit in the main or sub receiver. I choose the main receiver. So the first order of business is to get the work bench all cleared off and get the K3 on it. That is easier than it sounds as the back of the radio desk is a snake of wires and cables. Before taking ANY cabling comes off the K3 I made notes of where all the cabling came from and went too. In the past  it was delusional of me to think I can just "remember" where all the cables went on the

K3 hookup

back of the K3. So it was off to the bench with the K3 and the ESD band went on!! Removing the top cover was very straight forward and exposed the insides of the K3. Now I don't know about you but I am never thrilled about digging into the K3 and adding and removing parts. The Sub-receiver was the first item to be removed. There are 3 TMP coaxial cable connections that have to be removed. Unfortunately I have nice fat farmer's fingers I managed to remove the cables and pull the sub-receiver out.  This exposed the main K3 board where the KBPF3 was to be installed and a new 8 pole

Top cover off

6khz filter to be added. The general coverage kit came with 2 standoff's for mounting the board but in Elecraft's wisdom the standoff's were already on the main board.,so that was one step I could forget about. The KBPF3 board fit into place very smoothly the only concern was mating the KBPF3 connecting pins to the main board. That was done by feel and was only known if it was done correctly when the stand offs on the main board matched the holes on the KBPF3 board. Then it was time to install the 6khz 8 pole inrad filter. The filters have to be installed from wide to narrow. This meant it

Sub-receiver

was time for me to move filters around to accommodate the new wide filter.  Removing a bottom cover was in order to expose the filter's fastening screws.  With the KBPF3 board in, sub-receiver back in....just a note of caution make sure the plastic cover is  on the battery on the K3's main board. If it inadvertently came off and was left off it will come into contact with the sub-receiver's case and that is not good. Next all the covers went on

KBPF3 installed

and it was time to hook the radio up and turn the general coverage board on in the K3's sub-menu's. Also setup the new filter within  the elecraft software. This is when it hit me....I MADE A VERY AMATEUR MISTAKE!! The filters have to be installed wide to narrow bandwidth. I checked out my pictures and sure enough for some reason (brain dead

Note the wrong order of filters!!

moment) I have the 6khz filter after the 2.7khz filter. I have not done it yet but I have to take the whole radio apart to switch the two filters around. After that mistake I stopped for the evening I won't check out the general coverage until the filters are switched around.

Bottom cover off

Waterloo weekend air show

CLICK TO ENLARGE PHOTO'S FOR THE FULL AFFECT.

F-16

This past Sunday Julie and I were off to the Waterloo Air Show . The weather forcast was very iffy and seemed the show may be cancelled due to severe weather. The sky's were very dark most of the morning as we toured the aircraft on the tarmac but we were told it was going to clear. By the time the show started at 1pm there was sunny periods. We did come prepared with rain gear, umbrella and the specialized rain gear for Julie's camera stuff.  We had what was called flight deck seating...translation VERY up close and personal with the aircraft and NOISE. Below are  very few (1300 in total) of the snap shots Julie captured during the airshow. The American F-16 Viper, Canadain Forces CF-18  Fighter, the

CF-18

Eleccrafts AF1 enclosure.

Front mounted

In a prevous post I gave account of my Elecraft AF1 mini module audio filter project.I have built other mini modules from Elecraft such as the DL1 dummy load, N-gen wide band noise generator and the XG-2 three band test receiver test oscillator. All of the kits went together very well and they all without exception came with very easy to understand instructions. I have put these kits to get use while building many of the Elecraft radio kits. These test devices can also be very useful around the shack to do many tests as you either build , test or trouble shoot many pieces of shack equipment. The only beef I have with all these kits is Elecraft does

Stand offs mounted

not offer enclosures for them. My DL1, N-gen and XG-2 are still on the bench without enclosures. This does not concern me to much as they are out of the way and in a safe place and out only during use. On the other hand the AF1 audio filter is going along side my KX1 in

Amateur Radio Newsline

If you want to get a report of what's new's in Amateur radio then Amateur Radio Newsline may be for you. It's about a 30 minute report of what's up in ham radio over the past week. It comes out on Friday each week and gives a run down of what has happened, is happening and some upcoming items as well.  It is anchored by Jim Davis W2JKD who as of 2010 has been in broadcasting for 50 years. The news segments are about 30 minutes in length and are very professional sounding. There are links at the website to either download the news in MP3 format, a news script can be printed, a pod cast and finally you can pick it up on YouTube as well. Below is the YouTube version it is 28 minutes in total so you may want to listen to it in segments or jump through it to get the feel of Newsline. Enjoy!!

Monitoring Times....

A few weeks ago I was at the local book store with Julie she was getting her supply of photography periodicals. While there I came across a magazine that has intrested me but I never had purchased..Monitoring Times.  Monitoring Times is a mix of Amateur radio, Short Wave and scanner information. As  I was looking the magazine over I noticed they offered it via email each month as a full color PDF. I did not end up purchasing the magazine but at home I looked  up the details of what Monitoring Times calls their MTXpress version. What I found out was it's cheaper than the paper version, it has click-able links which I find are a great

Another CW contest in the books.......

This year's North American QSO party was more of a relaxed event. Kevin on his propagation site  informs his readers that the largest geomagnetic storm in cycle 24's history just took place. It was close to a G4 level when you add this to my QRP attic antenna setup the contest is now a relaxed event. Out this way 10 meters was dead I did check back now and then but there was nothing. 15 meters was good for about 8 contacts most were at the noise floor (which was about S4) So this made for fading and copying was a long process,  patience's at both ends of the contact were in order. As always 20 and 40 meters were the places to be in times of solar unrest. As I said this was a contest of enjoyment and relaxation so the event ended for me around 6 pm local time. It was time for dinner and a movie with Julie. I was able to make 42 contacts on 20 meters. I never made it to 40 meters but checked in on it now and then and lots of activity was to be had there.

Today the blog is ONE YEAR!!!!

Well it's hard to believe that it's been one full year of blogging for me. Seems just a short time ago I was discovering blogging never thinking I would have an active blog. So what has happend over the last 12 months of blogging. I sure have expanded my horizons with ham radio! Areas such as WSPR, QRPp, types of portable antennas, fellow ham's taking ham radio outdoors and the list goes on. Im just amazed that folks want to read the stuff I post. I was not sure what to exspect with blogging and were my blog would end up heading but over this past year I have been having a blast. For someone who really does not say much this past year I was able to squeeze out 110 post's. Well here's to another year of blogging.........CHEERS.....

AF1 VS KX1 problem solved......

The setup along with the cheat sheet

After my outing on Saturday with my KX1 and newly built Elecraft AF1 I was frustrated the filtering was just not as sharp and clear as I was lead to believe. I also was  getting what I thought to be RF  into the AF1 from the KX1 and rendering it more or less useless. When I keyed the KX1 my ear buds made my CW just sound like mush . I was unable to know what I was sending,  I put the question out to the Elecraft reflector. There were two common answers to my question, the first was "am I using a counterpoise with the Miracle whip antenna" the other "try if all else fails putting capacitors between the

You can count on WSPR

10 meters

It's a long weekend out this way so after a nice long walk thought I would see what is happening on the bands........NOTHING......I turned on PowerSDR just to get a broader scope of the bands and again....NOTHING.......I did double check to see if I was on the dummy load I have done that before!! So it was off to WSPR to see how the signal was doing. The bands were not as dead as I thought WSPR proved that otherwise. 20 meters was alive and well with WSPR signals and for the attic antenna things did not work out to bad. It was then time to live on the edge and head down to 10 meters and see what was happening down there. According the the WSPR map signals were bouncing around short distances in Europe but not much happening in North America.  Then it was off to 15 meters and there seemed to be nothing happening for anyone no matter where you were. Well this help pass some time and keep me out of trouble!

15 meters

20 meters