K3: using data modes with MixW

[Tom Whiteside]

I participate in Army MARS nets where MT-63 is used in tandem with voice nets.    I would like to be able to use the K3 Data mode to be able to automatically switch from microphone to line in and to automatically set the compression to 0.    That seems to work but I see MixW display a frequency offset when the mode is changed and the transmission is indeed offset from where it would be just using SSB.

The K3 considerately provides an option to combine the mic and line in inputs and doing that plus manually turning down the speech compression is a very reasonable work around but I am wondering if there is another trick in the K3 and or MixW that would allow the original plan of switching to data mode to work?    

Tom Whiteside N5TW
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[Paul Fletcher]

Tom Whiteside wrote

I am wondering if there is another trick in the K3 and or MixW that would allow the original plan of switching to data mode to work?    

You could get MixW to send a command to the K3 to turn down compression to 0 and back up when switching to receive - can't remember exactly how you do this in MixW but you can with a macro. Maybe a MixW expert on here can help?

73 Paul

[Julian, G4ILO]

Tom Whiteside wrote

I participate in Army MARS nets where MT-63 is used in tandem with voice nets.    I would like to be able to use the K3 Data mode to be able to automatically switch from microphone to line in and to automatically set the compression to 0.    That seems to work but I see MixW display a frequency offset when the mode is changed and the transmission is indeed offset from where it would be just using SSB.

The K3 considerately provides an option to combine the mic and line in inputs and doing that plus manually turning down the speech compression is a very reasonable work around but I am wondering if there is another trick in the K3 and or MixW that would allow the original plan of switching to data mode to work?    

MixW has an option to enter frequency offsets for each mode, so using that you might be able to compensate for the shift you are seeing. However I think the problem is basically because you are (I assume) using LSB for phone, whereas USB is used by the K3 for data. So I think you need to use the option in MixW that says default digi mode is RTTYR (i.e. reverse sideband.) That will make data use LSB. (Not knowing anything about MT-63 I don't know if that is OK - some modes work on either sideband others don't.)

MixW will display a different frequency in data mode, because it shows the frequency of the actual data transmission (i.e. carrier + audio offset) not simply the frequency of the suppressed carrier, as it does in SSB. But it will not actually change the transceiver frequency switching from LSB to RTTYR.

[Tom Whiteside]

Thanks for the helpful comments.    I am now up and running using a mode change from SSB to data mode.   In my application, both voice and data are SSB so no mode change was necessary.    The specific trick was in MixW under the view menu, select spectrum and then check the box that says: RF, USB.    After doing that, MixW displays an unchanged frequency from the K3 when the mode gets changed and the data ends up with the proper shift.     Thanks again for the help!

Tom Whiteside N5TW
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