Joe, A single cable can work, but it may not be the ideal solution for the long run, should your equipment expand or change.
Instead of a custom K3 to SPE cable, consider an alternative that will allow stock cables to work, no matter which radio or amplifier you want to connect. I designed the Serial Box (S-BOX <https://bit.ly/S-BOX>) to make it easy to connect the K3 (or any modern transceiver) to any device designed to monitor serial port traffic for automatic band switching and auto-tuning, including all SPE Expert amplifiers and most ACOM automatic amplifiers, plust the Elecraft KPA1500 and any serial port band decoders / antenna switches and SteppIR controllers. The goal was to allow all of these devices to track the transmit frequency of the transceiver automatically (not just the band), with all devices switching at the same time. The S-BOX can also be configured to support the custom "null-modem" connection from the 9-pin SPE "PORT" terminal to a SteppIR controller, if you have more than one transceiver connected to the SPE, and are using both inputs. The SPE firmware automatically translates the frequency data of the active radio to a common format for the SteppIR controller. Using a simple cable with "Band Data" pins on the K3 ACC connector (instead of serial data) isn't ideal if you intend to use the Expert's built-in tuner on some band segments, because that cable only provides band information to the amplifier, instead of frequency information to the tuner. Using a simple cable to the K3 RS-232 connector precludes using it for other purposes, such as a logging program. The S-BOX was designed to work around these common interconnection issues. 73, Bob, N6TV https://bit.ly/S-BOX On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 7:06 AM K4PX K4PX <k4px...@gmail.com> wrote: > Anybody got a spare cable to run from K3 to Expert 1.3K-FA they would like > to part with? > 73, > Joe > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to n...@arrl.net > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
