From the CQ-Contest Reflector

[Julius Fazekas n2wn]

Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:26:51 -0700
From: "Tree" <[hidden email]>  Add to Address BookAdd to
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Subject: [CQ-Contest] Elecraft K3 - more impressions



Made it back from KL7 over the weekend.  I took my
beta test K3 with me
 
and we did a multi-single from KL3R in the IARU
contest (with K6AW and
KL7RA).

This 8 pound box sure packs in a lot of performance.
One option we
 suggested
to Elecraft is a set of covers made out of lead - just
to make it feel
 like
it has more stuff in it.  

If you take off the top cover - the initial response
is something like
 "where
is the radio?".  It turns out most of the radio is
comprised of surface
mount components on the bottom side of the main PC
board.  

For those of you who have read their brochure, you
know that the first
 IF
is 8.2 MHz and this is where your "roofing filter" is.
 I have two in
 my
radio currently - 400 hz and 2.8 khz.  There is room
for five of them.
You can either switch between the filters and have the
DSP match the
roofing filter - or continuously vary the bandwidth
and have the
 roofing
filters automatically switch to the smallest filter
that can be used to
support the desired bandwidth.  The combination of the
roofing filter
and DSP results in a receiver that will hold its own
in any situation I
can imagine.  

The receiver sounds great and is a joy to use on SSB
or CW.  It even
 did
well decoding RTTY signals directly to the diplay
during the recent
 NAQP
RTTY contest.  Too bad the firmware isn't all done yet
- or I could
 have
made some QSOs by sending information with my paddle
and have the radio
send it out in RTTY or PSK.

On SSB - the transmit audio sounds very clean and I
have gotten good
reports on the air (including a rag chew with KC7V on
six meters).  

The flexbility of the hardware is mainly determined by
the firmware.
Elecraft has obviously packed plenty of power into the
processor that
executes the firmware as the controls are all very
responsive.  I was
impressed to find out that the squlech knob can be
used for the RF gain
of the second receiver if installed.  The second
receiver is an exact
copy of the main receiver (again with up to 5 filters)
and will enable
diversity reception amongst other things.

The transmitter puts out 120 watts - so you have a bit
of extra drive
power for your pair of 3-500Zs.  :-)

The operating controls are easy to use.  It didn't
take me long to
 become
"at one" with the radio.  The VFO dial can be setup
for 8 khz per
 rotation,
which is responsive enough for those fast sprint QSYs.
 This is with 20
 hz
resolution - so you don't hear the frequency steps
(which I consider to
 be
very hard to listen to).

And the radio didn't turn into a pile of parts after
about 7K miles on
 the
tough KL7/VY1/VE7 roads.  :-)

I understand Elecraft is close to publishing their
performance numbers.
  They
want to make sure they have enough data from several
units before doing
 this
and they tend to put some safety margin into them.  I
understand they
 will
give even the $10K radios a run for their money - and
probably finish
 ahead
in many areas.

I am not a numbers expert and go more by the sound of
the radio - and
 this
one sounds great.  

Elecraft is hard at work finishing up the firmware.
Some of the
functionality is new as of a few days ago and we are
getting constant
updates to fix bugs and add new features.  

73 Tree N6TR
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