ARRL K3 review for Apr QST posted

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ARRL K3 review for Apr QST posted

Dave, G4AON
Those receive figures shouldn't come as a surprise, myself and our
German colleagues posted similar figures some time ago.

I don't agree with their findings about the K3 being suitable for use on
Amtor. I can get mine to work on the bench to a TS480 but actual side by
side on air comparisons give an excessive number of re-tries when the K3
is the "master" station. These are regardless of drive levels, timing
settings, SYNCH mode enabled, fast AGC, hardware AGC mod, etc. The
situation is the same on Pactor. I've had to keep my TS-480 on the bench
alongside the K3 for ARQ data modes, which is irritating. Terminal units
are KAM Plus (v7) and SCS PTC-IIex (v3.8).

73 Dave, G4AON
K3/100 #80

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Re: ARRL K3 review for Apr QST posted

Brendan Minish
Dave and I may have to differ somewhat on this one !

I have been using my K3 regularly on pactor since it first arrived back
in November, admittedly on 3,000 Km + paths.

It's true that the timings initially were too slow for short hop amtor
QSO's, This has now been largely resolved in firmware with some further
speedups promised (and needed for best results).
The Current K3 TX-RX timings in digital-s mode are at as good as most of
the the other DSP IF radios out there

Dave and I have had issues in tests between us but I am not entirely
convinced that they are timing (or even directly K3) issues. It's a very
short 80m hop between us and amtor can suffer badly under some multipath
conditions .

On the other hand I have had perfectly OK amtor QSO's with other EU
stations as well as maintaining regular pactor2 and 3 schedules with my
boating Friends.
Pactor Throughput has, in the main been excellent, every bit as good as
it was on the icom IC-7800
Amtor timings are much more critical, the K3 required the digital-s mode
speedups in firmware but looking at the reviews on the ARRL website of
some of the other DSP-IF radios that get the arrl ' amtor capable stamp'
one wonders how they would perform in reality on amtor

TX-RX turnaround Numbers tabulated from the ARRL reviews, all for radios
they deem 'amtor capable' hope the table is not too messed up

                TX-RX   RX-RX
elecraft K3 22msec  ~25msec (not measured by ARRL)

TT orion2 30msec 18msec
TT OmniVII 20msec 18msec
Yaseu ft-2000D 24msec 37msec
Yaseu FT-950 25msec 39msec
Kenwood TS-480 23msec 12msec
Kenwood TS-2000 18msec 10msec
Icom IC-7800 15msec 10msec
Icom IC 756pro3 24msec 10msec
Icom IC-7000 24msec 12msec

it would certainly be nice if it was faster, especially on RX-TX but
it's certainly no laggard, a TXD (TxDelay) setting of 25msec seems
adequate for correct operation

The TNC here is an SCS PTC2E and I have been doing pactor 2/3 with my
boating Friends since 2001 so I know pactor's capabilities well enough
at this stage to spot when things are not going well in the throughput
stakes

www.northabout.com

73
Brendan EI6IZ


--
Don‘t complain. Nobody will understand. Or care. And certainly don‘t try
to fix the situation yourself. It‘s dangerous. Leave it to a highly
untrained, unqualified, expendable professional.

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