K3 Curious phenomenon with doublet on 80m

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K3 Curious phenomenon with doublet on 80m

WA9VEE
"and the bottom line reading is very
unstable - the power jumps randomly from 18W to 48W, so is the reading of
wattmeter - it is also unstable. The returned power stays pretty low though.
The meter bars on K3 also unstable. The SWR shows one bar and it is blinking
fast. The RF is jumping randomly."

In November the power and SWR on my K3 were unstable 160M to 30M but perfect
with a dummy load. After much give and take with the great Elecraft support
staff, and even trying a new 10W PA unit, the problem turned out to be all
my fault.

I was using a long pair of wires from the manually tuned remote tuner across
the apartment hooked to the straight key so I could fire up the rig at the
tuner, then fine tune the tuner. The rig worked fine into a dummy load, but
not when connected to an antenna.

Turns out those 2 long wires were picking up a lot of RF and feeding it into
the Key Jack causing the problem.

What I should of done is test the rig with only the coax and power
connected. That would have shown the problem right away.

Wayne WA9VEE
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Re: K3 Curious phenomenon with doublet on 80m - solved!

k.igor
Happy to report that inquiry to Elecraft support yielded suggestion to
re-run VCO MD CAL, which promptly solved the problem, so I am back in
business on lower 80m. Got to love this service. Thanks!

73,

Igor, N1YX


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