this happened on an older version (1.7.20) on a mac, but on 1.7.25 it did not have this problem (on linux). - so perhaps this bug was fixed in the later version
the spatial axes were RA--SFL and DEC-SFL, if they were manually changed to the -SIN type, kpvslice was happy
Although in image mode karma works find, for kpvslice the RA-DEC reference map has a bad wcs, resulting in a black image.