WA5ZNU: Things that bug me about the KX1

Tuesday, June 08, 2004 Zulu

Things that bug me about the KX1

Zero beating is hard. The sidetone test mode blocks out the RX so you can't beat the, you have to swap them. I might try turning off the TX and sending dits to beat, but there really ought to be a one-button solution to mix 600Hz with the received audio, especially since the TX offset is fixed at 600Hz. Wayne N6KR said that the sidetone is wimpy because it is mixed from two PIC output lines with a couple of resistors and is "wimpy" so he has to mute the RX, but I still think a one-button zero-beat could be done. I'll have to get my scope out, but it sounds to me like the harmonic content is fairly rich (i.e., it's probably a square wave) and makes it harder to tell right. Narrowing the filter and peaking the RX audio first helps, as it puts you in the right ball park. Another thing I do is to tune the carrier to 0Hz and then go up or down 600Hz but that's kind of a pain as there can be QRM 600Hz away and it's hard to remember whether to go up or down as the injection is different on the different bands.
The chorded-hold key combinations (menu-band-hold for Tune, menu-RIT-hold for display mode, etc.) are hard to get to, because if you hold the first button for > 0.5s then it does the unchorded operation right away. That is, if you do menu-hold-band it just does menu-hold, which is enter edit menu. To make matters worse, once you're in edit menu mode, the chorded menu options aren't available any more, and you have to tap menu once to get back to VFO display mode. I complained about it, but apparently I am the first, and the K1 and K2 do the same thing. Still, I think it shouldn't perform the hold operation until you release the keys, and at that point it can decide whether it was chorded or not.

- posted by Leigh @ 23:47 z

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