K3 Band Independance

[Brett Howard]

If you just want to hear about the feature skip a little bit.  If you
want to be proud you chose Elecraft read on.


This is a breath of fresh air.  Not to long ago, November last year, I
purchased a Blackberry Storm.  The first touchscreen Blackberry device.
The first OS on this thing was completely terrible.  Since then one
official OS has been released which was horribly slow but at least
somewhat stable.  Since then we've been leaked accidentally an update
every 10 to 15 days.  Never are you provided release notes or change
logs of any kind and never do you have any person with the company which
which you can share findings about these leak's (I call them beta's).
Each one of these leaks adds features that you have to just dig to find
on your own and not a single one only added for fixed things from the
previous version with out regressing and breaking something that was
working great in the last version.  

I won't say that we didn't have our fair share of regressions in the
beginning of the K3 but they were minescule in comparison to the Storm
and its invaluable that you have the ability to not only read what was
intended to be changed but you have a DIRECT avenue to speak with the
individuals who can do something about it.  Rather than just post your
problems to a forum and hope that people who can do something about it
come and read it.

So in that I say thank you Elecraft.

<<<<SKIP TO HERE IF YOU WANT TO BE SPARED MY SOAP BOX>>>>>

With this feature I've not got a lot of time testing in so far but I've
tried a few weird things here and there.  Keep in mind I only have one
receiver in my radio.

Upon first loading the new firmware I pressed the band up button.  Both
changed...  Duh set the VFO IND menu item.  After doing that ok lets see
here band up.  Poof VFO A changes B does not.  So far so good.

So I then proceed to tune in a QSO on 20 on VFO A and another on 40 with
the A/B switch.  For me thats A/B, M>V, 4 and poof I'm on 40 and tuning
in another station.  Get that station tuned in and then I'm switching
between QSO's with A/B.  All is good thats what we expected.  So I
started up the DVR and did some switching between the two QSO's.  The
DVR seemlessly records the two bands just like it came out the speaker
it can once again.  

So then I tried using the A>B function and now both VFO's were on 20
meters.  Shoot I thought I lost what freq that 40 meter QSO was on.  So
I decided to go look for it again.  I simply pressed M>V, 4 and the 40
meter band was left alone with my last frequency intact.  My QSO (or
perhaps in the future "run frequency") was still right there ready to
go.

Being that you can put different filter settings into VFO A and VFO B
you can use the A/B button as a quick (no hold required) way to step
between two different floating filter presets much like the I/II feature
on the width knob does today but with out the hold time.  Personally I
prefer the NORM way of doing things out of the three but the radio lends
its self to any one of a million operating styles.  

Pressing and holding REV while in split mode is a bit odd hearing all
the relays fire off as you take a quick jump for a listen on the other
side but all works flawlessly.  Both VFO A and B knobs remain true to A
edits the tob area and B edits the bottom area.  Gotta love consistency
in the UI!  One thing I do dislike here is that when pressing REV it
displays the antenna name for a second there...  I'd almost prefer not
to have that pop up when switching bands via the REV button.  It makes
sense to display it when I'm switching bands via other methods as its
stored on a per band basis but when I'm just quickly jumping via the REV
button it just kinda gets in the way.  

I tried beating on things in an attempt to see if the tuner forgot its
brains when switching.  Got on 40 where my antenna is very narrow and
tuned an area with normally bad SWR.  Then got on 30 where my antenna
isn't resonant and tuned that.  Switching between the two results in a
rig immediately ready for TX.

I'll have to do some more getting into this later but as of yet it seems
like a lot of looking for corner cases was done before it was even a pre
beta.

~Brett (KC7OTG)

PS:  I just typed this up as I was trying things so it probably has a
bit of a rambling nature to it.  Was intended to be a quick blurb and I
deeply apologize for not going back through and proofreading and
cleaning this up but I gotta get to the gym before it gets too too
late...  Its 9pm now. :)  I'm gonna need time to cool down and get to
bed so I can stil function at my job tomorrow... :)

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[wayne burdick]

On Feb 4, 2009, at 9:29 PM, Brett Howard wrote:

> Pressing and holding REV while in split mode is a bit odd hearing all
> the relays fire off as you take a quick jump for a listen on the other
> side but all works flawlessly.  Both VFO A and B knobs remain true to A
> edits the tob area and B edits the bottom area.  Gotta love consistency
> in the UI!  One thing I do dislike here is that when pressing REV it
> displays the antenna name for a second there...  I'd almost prefer not
> to have that pop up when switching bands via the REV button.  It makes
> sense to display it when I'm switching bands via other methods as its
> stored on a per band basis but when I'm just quickly jumping via the
> REV
> button it just kinda gets in the way.

I'll have the antenna name flash removed in the next field-test
release, Brett. Thanks for the report.

73,
Wayne
N6KR

---

http://www.elecraft.com

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