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<DIV>Folks</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For some time now I have been experimenting with K5SO diversity software
with a great deal</DIV>
<DIV>of success. I have been following the progress of others on this reflector,
and would like to</DIV>
<DIV>mention something to be aware of. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>When Metis arrived, I immediately changed over from Magister (OZY as well)
and was thrilled</DIV>
<DIV>with the results. Over a period of about two weeks, and during many
software changes, I</DIV>
<DIV>began to see degradation in performance of diversity operation. The
noise floor would rise,</DIV>
<DIV>and on occasion it appeared that one of the Mercury cards would "take off".
This got progressively</DIV>
<DIV>worse, so I switched back to OZY and all seemed to play well again. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Also with Metis, all was well with just one Mercury on the back plane. I
saw Georg, DL2KP, </DIV>
<DIV>comments and it sounded a bit like the things I had been seeing. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>What I found in my case was the LPU was failing after being on for a few
minutes with</DIV>
<DIV>Peny, Metis, Excalibur, and two Mercury boards. I monitored the
regulated 12v and that</DIV>
<DIV>stayed stable, however, the regulated 5 v started at 4.98 v and continued
to drop down</DIV>
<DIV>below 4.2 v and this is where the noise floor started rising. I measured
excessive drop </DIV>
<DIV>across R6 (2.2 ohm 10 W) resistor and also notice a physical split
longitudinally down</DIV>
<DIV>the center. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I switched back to my old ATX power supply and all problems vanished
(except for the</DIV>
<DIV>occasional noise hump associated with switching P/S). I fashioned 4 x 2 ohm
5 W </DIV>
<DIV>resistors (series/parallel now 20 W dissipation) and the LPU seems to be
holding up for </DIV>
<DIV>over an hour. I will test it longer tomorrow.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I thought there must have been some software issues, but so far it has
turned out to be</DIV>
<DIV>LPU. Check the +12 v and +5 v on the Atlas board (the other voltages are
not needed)</DIV>
<DIV>for stability and ripple.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>73 de Joe</DIV>
<DIV>K1RQG</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>