I am at the beach and decided to 'play' in last weekend's rtty contest with my K2/100. I also have the KAT100 with me, and used the Rigblaster nomic as the sound card interface.
I was pretty impressed with the rx in the contest. I am sure 80% of the qsos did not show any deflection on the s-meter. The usage of the KDSP2 was very positive. I set the AFIL filters to center on 1.1 Khz and did a range of bandwiths, from 800-250. After a while, I mainly used the 500 hz bandwidth filter. It was as good as the filtering in my old Icom crystal setups.
I can concur with the discussion hoping that someday we could have a KFSK2 card so I did not have to manage the afsk set-up.
I was disappointed to not be able to do any 40/80m rtty. The swr on both is below 1.5/1 but anything over 8 watts would cause the k2 to reset itself. Listening through the 'audio out' port on the nomic, the audio coming from the PC had a strong swoosh sound just before the reset of the K2. I suspect it must be some RF in the shack. I do not have a dummy load so I cannot accurately state the cause. I hope its stray RF. I can work cw on both bands at full power with no issue.
I bought a computer fan at Staples that you normally mount in the computer case where all of the pci cards are. I clipped off the excess aluminum tabs, got a large rubber band and put it on top of the K2 to blow over the heat sink. The fan is not so noisy and I felt much better that the 50 watts were not causing any real damage. If anyone is considering any sustained psk/rtty operations, you might consider this approach.
All in all, it was a positive experience. I hope to learn the cause of the 40/80m problem. Now if I just had that Elecraft power amp......
73 de Neal k3nc
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