A friend is having an issue that I cannot resolve. I maintain the station for an elderly friend who prefers CW, and often operates at about 40 wpm. A while back he told me that his "E"s were too short, and hoped I could change the timing or weighting, or whatever to "fix them". When I hear him on the air, I thought they sounded perfect... he swears that they used to be, but no longer are.
I went over and verified that the weight setting on his K3 was set as mine was, and that his microHAM keyer was set as mine was as well. He still said that the letter "E" was way too short. Today I went over to his QTH again. I sent some CW at 40 wpm and agreed with him that the letter "E" seemed short... I listened carefully at a variety of speeds, and down around 20 or 30 wpm all sounded good to both of us. I had no instruments to verify what I was hearing, but it 'seemed' to me that up around 40 wpm the leading dit of any character was a bit short. I admit, I am not a 40 wpm guy, but that is how it sounded to me. I then went into the next room, where he has a different station setup, where I selected NO antenna, turned the RF gain way down, and tuned that rig to the same freq as his K3. I then had him transmit at 0.1 watt from the K3. To my ear the CW I was hearing on the other radio was perfect. We then traded places, and I transmitted while he listened. I transmitted from 40 up to 50 wpm, and he agreed that the CW coming from the K3 was "perfect"... but at 40 wpm the monitor signal from the K3 does not sound perfect. He said that it did sound perfect until a couple of months ago. Assuming that it, in fact, does now sound different that when I first setup the station for him, I have no idea what may have changed, or what to do about it. As I indicated, I cannot quantify the change, but I do believe that it is different. I am now home and my K3, with all the keying settings the same as his, and with my microHAM keyer set the same as his, sounds "perfect" at 40 wpm. I started to wonder if a component in the monitor circuit may have changed value, resulting in a truncation of the sound of that first dit. I want to help my friend, but I have NO idea what to try next. Dave - K9FN ______________________________________________________________ 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
