Posts Tagged ‘Elecraft K3’
Part 2 of the K3 surgery.
It's time for the surgery |
Beware of other components |
Front control head removed |
Fume trap and soldering iron ready |
Trimming the header pins |
The two stubborn pins |
After using Hakko 808 |
Old out and new ready |
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Doing surgery on the Elecraft K3 part 1
It's time for some surgery. |
First off an anti static mat with a wrist strap, when dealing with state of the art radios this is a must! A medium quality soldering station makes your soldering jobs a pleasure. I have the WellerWES51, this is a nice temperature controled unit. The tips can be changed out for varied soldering jobs and what's nice with this grade of soldering stations the tips heat up very fast and stay hot.
A soldering station would not be complete without some solder. I have in the past built the Elecraft KX1, 2 Elecraft K2's and at least 25 or more other projects having to do with ham radio. The solder I use is what's called SN63PB37. So what does this mean..........it's make up is 63% tin and 37% lead. This solder flows well and does not take real high temps to get it flowing. For the job at hand with my K3 I am using a diameter of .020. Also a good idea is to get a nice solder stand. The one I have was reasonably priced and allows me too gently pull and I have enough solder. I am not fighting with tangled solder or solder that keeps
rolling off the desk. When you solder there is smoke and it's a good idea to pickup a fume fan of some type. I purchased the Fume trap brand of fans. It works great and keeps the fumes away from you breathing them in. You then have the hand tools that again have to be chosen and purchased wisely. You don't have to break the bank but don't go for super cheap. For this job I will be using my screw drivers, tweezers and diagonal cutters. Finally with this project I have to remove old solder from the pads that are on the K3's PC board. This is a part of the project if things go bad they can go really bad! In the past I have used the hand held spring loaded desoldering pump. They are ok but not great, I took the plunge and purchased the Hakko 808 desoldering tool. This has been one my best investments! This are most of the tools that I am going to be using and for this post that's about all I'm going to talk about. My next post (part 2) I am going to get into the steps I used to change P30 and P35 headers.
VE3WDM is back into QRPp very low power contacts!
I was feeling under the weather this weekend and thought it would be nice and relaxing to spend some time on the radio. It so happens a CW contest was in full swing the Russian DX contest. I was not into competing but just handing out points. The propagation conditions this past week were a struggle to say the least. Today the conditions were on the rebound a K index of 2 and the Sunspots were in at 27 and the solar wind was still up at 615. I parked on 15m and there was lots of DX rolling in for the contest. I made only 7 contacts for Saturday (so far) most were done with QRPp power! I was very pleased that my condo antenna was able to get out to make some great QRPp low power contacts. My K3 is only able to get down as low at 100mW's silly me I sold my attenuator thinking my contacts under 100mW's were over! I was able to make 3 contacts at milli watt power, 2 contacts at 1 watt, one contact at 3 watts and finally 5 watts. My first QRPp contact in the contest was K5WA in the states, my next QRPp contact was with EA3CX in Spain. Then finally F5IN in France with 500mW's of power.
The 7 contacts break down as follows
1. F5IN 500mW 7,500 miles per watt
2. K5WA 100mW 13,213 miles per watt
3. EA5CX 100mW 39,956 miles per watt
4. DK3QZ 1 watt 3,818 miles per watt
5. DL0AO 1 watt 3,818 miles per watt
6. HC2SL 3 watts
7. ZF2DX 5 watts
You can save some cash by double checking.
Over the past few weeks I had put some extra dust gathering ham gear up for sale. The sale was a successes and I ended up making 400.00 ham bucks. My main purpose for selling off some gear was to gather the funds for the new Elecraft K3 synthesizer (KSYNA3A as it's called) Without going into detail…..it's a very nice upgrade to the already great K3. While at the Elecraft site I was looking at what else the my K3 could do with in regards to upgrades. I came across the high stability ref oscillator called the KTCXO3-1, it would be a great addition since I am now getting more into the digi modes and the less frequency drift the better. It's a 100.00 dollar upgrade and I wanted to do some more research on the topic before dishing out the cash! I ventured over to Google and typed it in, low and behold one of the sites that came up was VE3WDM blog!! Hmmm did I post about this at some time?? Off I went to my site and to my shock I found out I ordered the KTCXO3-1 when I ordered my new K3. It sure was good I looked into this before placing my order but having said that Elecraft is a great company and after explaining my realization I have had no problem sending it back. I'm getting older so the memory is getting shorter.
ARRL CW Contest done QRP style
Oliver is asking……"Ahhhh dinner!!! |
The rig setup |
Score rundown is as follows
Contacts DXCC's Points
81 39 9360
The equipment used was the Elecraft K3 with 500,400 and 250 inrad filters, the Elecraft P3, Begali Contour Key and the Flex control external VFO knob and last but not least the MFJ 1788 Magnetic loop antenna. The software used were N1MM+ contest software, N4PY rig control software and MRP40 CW code reader for the chain saw speed code. I never had Murphy pay me any visits during
The contest software |
Monday brings two dx contacts
Monday was a stay in and stay warm day oh and also I was able to fit in some ham radio time as well. Next weekend is the ARRL CW DX contest weekend and since I had time on my hands I thought I would finally install N1MM+ on my PC. Up to this point I have been using the older version of N1MM, the only time for me to update was just before a contest. According to Murphy's law if you update your contest software just before a contest bad things will happen! N1MM+ has some nice new features all of which I have not tried as of yet. While I was setting up and getting to know N1MM+ I had my K3 on and was rolling around the 20m band. I was able to make 2 DX contacts the first one being IK3VUT from italy. He was calling CQ and he came back to me on my first call to him. This was not your typically fast contact Luca gave you a report but also shared his name, thanked me for answering his CQ and asked my name. It was not a long QSO but it was nice to not just have a 599 and move on Luca gave me an honest 559 signal report.
late afternoon it was time to go out with Julie who had a photography assignment that involved us going downtown (Toronto) for some shots she needed to get. It sure was cold out but soon we would be back to our warm home and just a little more radio time as she edited some photos. This time on 20m I heard HC5AI calling CQ from Ecuador and after some going back and forth he got my call and the contact was made.
late afternoon it was time to go out with Julie who had a photography assignment that involved us going downtown (Toronto) for some shots she needed to get. It sure was cold out but soon we would be back to our warm home and just a little more radio time as she edited some photos. This time on 20m I heard HC5AI calling CQ from Ecuador and after some going back and forth he got my call and the contact was made.
It’s a cold one out there!
Steam coming off the water down at the lake |
The little motor in the antenna |