Cw keying expert 2kw pa - loss of first characters

Steve Gw0gei

I recently took delivery of spe expert 2kw pa. it's hooked up manually with no cat lead at present and just ptt lead from my flex 6300. First time out in a domestic cw contest on 80m and some stations had difficulty with my call. A check post contest with a local friend confirmed that semi break in on just the 6300 manually keyed with paddle or PC keyed with n1mmplus displayed no lost first characters. However when the amp was put into operate and keyed the first one or two dits were missing in the tx. I do not usually use qsk and generally have the delay in semi break in set to 460ms. Can someone point me in the right direction to solve this problem in settings as I have probably missed something. Cheers Steve gw0gei / gw9j

dj3cq

Been there, ran into the same problem. Have you put the fans to quiet mode? No way to do it in cw without loosing 1st character.

73, Jo

dj3cq

Steve Gw0gei

Thanks Jo, yes its in quiet no fan on rx mode. So are you saying if i change it to normal mode on fan setting the problem will go away? Will be very happy if its that simple to solve problem as 6m trophy contest is coming up and my contest group want to use my amp on 6m cw with n1mmplus. 73 Steve

Paul Christensen, W9AC

Steve,

According to the SPE 2K-FA owner's manual, the amp is ready to switch in only 6.5 msec.  The last time I measured my 6700's CW envelope rise time it was ~ 9 msec.  Assuming the 6300's rise time is similar, the SPE *should* be plenty fast.

One option is to enable TX INHIBIT in SSDR.  Then use the TX-INH line from the SPE's DB-15 connector.  See Section 13.3 (pp. 40 - 41) of the SPE owner's manual. 

The connections above should form a handshake between the SPE and Flex 6300. This would preclude RF being generated by the 6300 until it receives acknowledgment from the SPE amp.

I have no idea how well this works or if system timing is degraded in any way but it may be worth investigating.  Still, the SPE amp should be fast enough without the TX-INHIBIT circuit.  That too should be investigated.

Paul, W9AC

Steve Gw0gei

Thanks Paul - I have changed the amp to normal fans instead of no fan on rx and I didn't seem to have issues with 6m Europeans copying my call correct yesterday on 6m Es opening, so I will do some more testing on Hf this evening prior to having a play in wpx cw Hf contest this weekend as GW9J. I hadn't noticed the bit in the manual about not using silent fan mode in cw mode so hope that sorts it. I have not yet upgraded ssdr from 1.6 due to what I have been reading about 1.7 and winkey emulation so I will see how it all plays this weekend in the contest . Thanks to Jo for the tip off re the fans setting on the amp.
73

Steve gw0gei / gw9J