Steve, FB on your power supply confusion there.
The answer to your question depends on the voltage out of your power supply (under load). If it is only 12 volts, then my answer is yes, the current draw is OK. But if your power supply is developing 13.8 volts or a bit more, then your current draw is a bit on the high side of normal. It is not so high that it would be something to worry about. If you limit the power to 12 watts, you will normally see 2.5 amps or less on all bands except for 10 meters. Partial explaination: The K2 does internal power level control and will try to ramp up the power to the level requested by the POWER knob. To develop 12 watts with a 12 volt supply requires more current than if the voltage is higher - it is a simple matter of Volts times Amps equals Power - the more volts, the less current required since the K2 tries to keep the power constant. 73, Don W3FPR > -----Original Message----- > > I almost have to ask everyone to disregard my previous post. > > After turning off all the equipment ready to shuffle off to bed (it's very > late/early here) I'm looking at the lab style bench power supply that I'm > using an realise that it's max supply current is only 2.5A. I was hitting > the current max of the supply and it was going into 'current limit' > dropping the supply voltage to about 10-11 volts and I had not realised. > > Switching to a slighly larger lab supply capable of 3.0A output changes > things slightly! I'm now getting the following power output from my K2:- > > 80m - 17.2w > 40m - 16.5w > 30m - 15.7w > 20m - 15.6w > 17m - 15.6w > 15m - 14.5w > 12m - 14.0w > 10m - 11.5w > > Again these figures from the internal K2 power meter but the CB radio > pwr/swr meter agrees. Very happy chap with these figures :) > > So now the only question that remains is the current draw. The K2 now > shows current draw values between 2.58A and 2.92A. Is this current draw > 'normal' for these power output figures? > > Cheers, > > and sorry to trouble the group with my false alarm! > > Steve > VK2SJA > > K2 S/N 5556 > _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
