K4 on WT8P's Notes to Self

Notes on Field Day 2023

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 20:05:36 +0000

I wrapped up another field day with my friend Paul (W7PEZ) in Eastern Washington. For the two days, I had 204 contacts, broken out roughly as: Yes, I worked SSB. It was kinda Frankfurt United Norway

WT8P is sporting the 6-day salt and pepper look

Paul worked 200 contacts, nearly all CW. Both are personal records. Neither of us were “running,” which would certainly have bumped up the totals, nor did we operate all the time, because most of the fun of Field Day is Everything Else.

Triple Play

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 07:42:42 +0000

In geocaching, there are a lot of “challenges” published, where in addition to signing the log, you have an alternative logging requirement (“ALR”) to perform some feat. These can be as simple as “find 10 mystery caches” or “find a cache for every letter in the alphabet,” or more complicated. In my 15 years, I’ve done a lot of these, and some of my favorites: John Day Fossil Beds, Sheep Rock Unit, Oregon

Quieter fans on the Elecraft K4D

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 04:33:07 +0000

My first HF radio, the Elecraft KX3, was air-cooled and got me spoiled to the relatively quiet operation. The K4D, on the other hand, has two fans. Although the “base” ventilation speed has been lowered, there’s also some whining from the bearings. Most hams can’t hear it, I, unfortunately, can and don’t enjoy the sound.

I’d previously replaced the ones in my VHF/UHF radios, and reasoned there would be a similar process, but I’d been holding off until (a) the warranty expired, (b) I could find a fan that would fit and (c) someone else did it first, because I don’t want to the guy who finds the way to mess this up!

Displaying K4 Spectrum in N1MM

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 18:25:36 +0000

In mid-December 2022, N1MM (version 1.0.9758) introduced a spectrum display option supporting the Elecraft K4 radio. Below is a walk-through on setting it up.

For this to work, your radio will need to be connected to your local network. You can check this by tapping the Menu option and scrolling to the middle. You should see a valid IP address like in the screenshot above.

If you use a firewall (e.g., Firewalla Gold), you will also need to allow communication between devices on the port 9200.

Configuring N1MM+ CW for the Elecraft K4

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 16:22:00 +0000

Newer update here.

With my KX3, using N1MM+ to manage CW sending was accomplished via an indirect set of KX3 macros and keyboard sequences. Thus, we had this awfulness:

F1 CQ,{CATA1ASC KY CQ SST * ;}
F2 Exch,{CATA1ASC KY TU {EXCH};}
F3 Tu,{CATA1ASC KY tu * ;}

Bob (N6TV) presented at the Spokane DX Association and mentioned this on slides 52, 62, and 63 of his presentation. There is a lot of good information in his presentation, and you should view it. For my notes to self, the configuration is thus:

Configuring Elecraft K4D for WSJTX / FT8

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 17:04:42 +0000

After a year, my new Elecraft K4D has arrived. To any new owner, I’d highly recommend grabbing Bob (N6TV’s) general setup checklist. There are also some great presentations on Bob’s QRZ page.

**2022-08-13:**This guide is intentionally detailed to ensure that you have everything you need to be successful. Nearly all of the issues that folks have contacted me about are a result of skipping an important step. The top three items: COM port changed when you plug the USB into a different physical socket (you will need to re-map the devices – blame Windows); audio volume management; IP address versus hostname. While I’m happy to help, please check that you haven’t skipped a step.