K3 at Field Day

[Chuck Shefflette]

The Anne Arundel Radio Club once again convened for Field Day in Davidsonville, MD on Saturday. This year was going to be very different. In years past we have had one K3 in the CW tent and none anywhere else. This year I brought my two K3s along for the CW shelter and three other club members brought their K3s (and one P3) along for the HF SSB shelter. Sadly, two of the three SSB K3s went home with their owners late Saturday evening, being replaced by Kenwood rigs. The two in the CW shelter were accompanied by a Kenwood TS870. The three CW operators were busy, with the K3s manned most of the 24 hours. Together we made just over 1000 contacts on CW between the three of us, most of them on the K3s. The SSB guys made just over 1100 contacts between 6 radios - they've got to work harder next year!

Both of my K3s were well used over the 24 hours with no problems except for a couple of unseated power cables (from someone moving a rig or dropping something on the cable...) The radios got rave reviews and the CW memories received extensive use. We did notice that on a couple of occasions we could very clearly hear the second harmonic from the 40M K3 on the 20M K3 which could be understandable since they were both connected to Vee beams that were only about 150' apart and oriented N/S and E/W but I'm going to take a good look at the output signals from both of them before they go back on the air here.

I did most of my operating (I sat a position probably 18 or 19 out of 24 hours) with my "newer" rig that I purchased from a fellow ham after a lightning incident did a fair amount of damage to it. Some of you may remember reading about K3 #4407 - it required a new DSP, an MCU replacement, and an new KIO3 but that seems to have been the only damage to it and it works wonderfully now. We managed to work a lot of stations that were barely audible but able to be pulled out with the use of the K3's great DSP and filters.

One of the highlights of the "day" came late morning on Sunday. We were still missing Alaska to complete the US sections. I was working my way through 20M on the West facing Vee beam when I heard KL7AA faintly. I stopped and tried several times to work him - he got part of the station call but we just couldn't quite hook up (he must not have been using a K3 there :0) I called over to the other K3 position and had him move from 40M to 20M to try KL7AA using the North Vee beam. He managed to get him first try. We listened for a bit afterward with the Kenwood but couldn't hear anything but noise even though we could clearly hear him with both K3s. Everyone that was there at the time was suitably impressed and I suspect there may be one or two K3 sales out of the adventure.

Sitting at one of our meals, we were discussing Elecraft products and I happened to mention the KX3 - there was also some interest in that as well.

The bottom line is that everyone that touched any of the K3s at AARC, whether on phone or CW, was very impressed with them. They proved themselves in a fairly rough 10A situation where we (the CW ops) were sitting directly in the path of the phone ops' West facing 20/40M Vee beam and didn't even blink! Can't wait till next year so we can do it again! Now both of them will get a nice rest since I run about 50% QRP here at the house and seldom run them over 50W except for short periods.

73 & 72,

Chuck - AA3CS

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