Friday, August 12, 2011

Elecraft K-3 - Saving SPLIT State on Band Change

Since acquiring the Elecraft K-3 a couple of years ago, I have learned that I simply can NOT remember to put the K-3 back into SPLIT mode after I change bands. For example, I'll be trying to work a DX station on 17-M CW and he is listening UP. I see a spot for another DX station on 20-M so I take a break from calling the first station and go to 20-M. When I return to 17-M, the transceiver is correctly on the DX station's frequency, and I can see (and hear) that my "B" VFO is on the SPLIT frequency so I proceed to send my call only to hear "LID LID", "UP UP UP" or other not so pleasant things. It seems that the K-3 "forgot" that I had the SPLIT MODE turned on when I was previously on 17-M and it was now transceiving on the DX station's frequency.

A couple of days ago I was helping Jimmy, W8JA, set up his K-3 for RTTY operation and I noticed that HIS K-3 did NOT forget that his radio was in SPLIT MODE when it came back to the band where he was operating split. How could that be? Well, it turns out there is a setting in the K-3's CONFIG menu that controls whether or not the K-3 remembers the SPLIT MODE. It is the CONFIG menu entry called "SPLT SV". If that menu entry is set to "YES" (as it is in the image on the right) then the K-3 remembers the SPLIT, RIT and XIT on/off states for each band it is on. Here is the description from the K-3 manual:

SPLT SV - If set to YES, SPLIT, RIT , and XIT on/off states are saved per-band.

In my K-3 (and my manual) that setting is defaulted to "NO" so all I had to do was to access the CONFIG menu and find the SPLT SV entry, then change it to "YES." Hopefully I will no longer answer to the call of "LID" anymore!