I use a 6-foot run of 10 gauge cable between my power supply (the Astron RS-35M) and my K3S. With my Fluke DVM, I measured the voltage difference between the power supply output terminals and the Power Pole terminals inside the radio. The difference is only .03 or .04 volts under maximum current draw when transmitting at full power. In other words, the voltage drop across the entire length of the 10 gauge cable is negligible. There is no benefit to using a large gauge wire unless you are using a really long (>> 6 feet) cable.
73, John W1FV ----------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 17:34:59 -0500 From: "Gary Smith" <g...@ka1j.com> To: j...@audiosystemsgroup.com Cc: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3s - 80W on 160 - Resolved Message-ID: <5859b213.5783.6c3a...@gary.ka1j.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Hi Jim & the others who replied, This is a follow-up for someone in the future who looks for the same solution. Yeah, the small amount of difference in the wattage is insignificant but considering all the radios I've owned, the low end of the bands were always the highest output. 10M was usually the lowest output & with the K3/K3s, 6M was always as good as the other bands watt wise and 160 was full output. This not being the case, I was concerned. I had done the calibration and raised the output to 87W but that was it. As was suggested, I raised the voltage from the PS to give me 13.8V on transmit which required 14.6V resting. I'm using the cable Elecraft supplies and I'm suspecting it could be just a tad lower gauge/thicker copper to reduce the resistance but on 160M, I am now getting a 115W reading on the P3 and 113W on the LP-100A. So the increased voltage was the difference in my case. A thicker wire would certainly require less voltage than 14.6 and that's what I am going to look into. With the power Pole connector, I'll have to look a little deeper into what will work best. I have no crimping tool for Power Pole so that makes it more of a challenge. Anyway, thanks Jim & all who suggested the higher voltage, it was the answer in this instance. 73, Gary KA1J ______________________________________________________________ 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
