my K3 F/D experience
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I took my K3 to our club's Field Day operation. We have some serious
contesters and DXers in the group, most of which are Yaecomwood owners. A couple have TenTec. Most of these guys have 5 band DXCC or are Honor Roll, etc. We can operate CW and SSB on the same band simultaneously and often do. Band conditions here in the NE were not very good. My K3 has the Heil Proset for head phones and boom mike. I thought you all might like to read my observations: The first operator wanted me to set the receive equalizer flat, change the filter settings, etc to make the rig more suseptable to noise, QRM, etc because he said that without all the hash, intermod, etc, the bands sounded dead. He wanted the K3 to sound like what he was used to. While he might have been happy with the new settings when I listened to it, it was tiring.......meanwhile that guy barely gave up the use of the K3 for the entire weekend! His arguement was that without hearing a bunch of noise he couldn't tell if the spot he picked to run stations was quiet or was being QRMed by adjacent signals. Interesting. Two other CW ops sat down for a while, running 35+WPM and were very impressed with the smoothness of the rig. They both liked the filtering and the strength of the front end in the presence of other strong signals. EVERYONE cranked the RF gain to the max, even when I showed them that if they ran it about 2-3 O'clock and adjusted the audio gain instead they would have a more pleasant audio to listen to. Oh well, bad habits die hard. One comment I got was that this was the smoothest VOX of any rig the guy had operated. One problem we had was that the guys couldn't get the Ant 1 and Ant 2, and the several coax connectors straight in their minds. So occasionally after switching a coax I had to go over and see why there was no output. It was always operator error. The transmitting into no load did not cause any problems with the K3. Just the first time, I paniced because I thought that the finals had blown 2 hours into the operation. Fortunately it only took a few seconds to see what happened when someone mentioned they changed antennas. I did get a comment on the ease of figuring out the menu options as they were more intuitive than the operator was used to. Comments on the small size compared to the other rigs we had. Only one negative comment was the buttons are close together. We use band pass filters in the coax because of the 2 stations per band, but did not need those in line for the K3. Also, while I could hear some interference when I sat down behind a Kenwood 930 from another station, I never heard the K3. Every operator cranked the K3 output to max (110W output) could not get them to leave it at 100. But there were no problems observed. Every op had to fiddle with all the buttons....that's to be expected. Hey, we're hams. For the entire 24 hour period, I barely got to use my own rig. At one point there was a waiting list to sit down behind the mic or key. When I got home, it took a bit to get things back to normal for me because I had to figure out what everyone did. Of course I reloaded my configuration which speeded up that process. Bottom line: The rig performed flawlessly. Even with pretty hard use, everything went well. Thanks for a great product! John K2QY ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
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> Every operator cranked the K3 output to max (110W output) could not
> get them to leave it at 100. But there were no problems observed. > Every op had to fiddle with all the buttons....that's to be expected. > Hey, we're hams. Probably not too SSB-neighborly that way. Not sure if this is already implemented, but I could almost see a need for maximum PWR and Tx compression settings, controlled only through the K3 utility software where those parameters could be set to some temporary maximum value -- say 100W for stand-alone K3s and ...~35W for use with amps on contest weekends where the K3 may be shared among several button-happy operators. Locking down those parameters and making them only adjustable through utility software might be enough keep guest ops from experimenting with controls that can do the most harm on the bands. Paul, W9AC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
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In reply to this post by John Fritze
> Every operator cranked the K3 output to max (110W output) could not
> get them to leave it at 100. I don't know why hams are so uneducated about that. At least 110 watts is not as bad as what someone I know does with his contest FT1000MP's and other 100W radios. He runs them at 130 watts or more. :-( ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
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In reply to this post by P.B. Christensen
Yep, it's already there (although not settable from the K3 Utility).
From the FW release notes: "MCU 3.19 / DSP 2.17, 6-14-2009 * POWER-RELATED CONTROL LOCK: The PWR, MIC, and CMP controls can be locked by tapping '1' in CONFIG:PWR_SET. This is useful in some contests, such as Field Day, where a carefully-set up K3 might be used by multiple operators. Accessing a locked control flashes "LOCKED". SPD/DELAY/MON functions are still accessible. Tapping a locked knob still displays the current parameter value, even though you can't change it." (Of course, there's nothing to stop an op who knows the "secret" from simply unlocking the controls.) 73 -- Joe KB8AP On Jun 29, 2010, at 6:25 AM, Paul Christensen wrote: > ... > Probably not too SSB-neighborly that way. Not sure if this is already > implemented, but I could almost see a need for maximum PWR and Tx > compression settings, controlled only through the K3 utility > software where > those parameters could be set to some temporary maximum value -- say > 100W > for stand-alone K3s and ...~35W for use with amps on contest > weekends where > the K3 may be shared among several button-happy operators. Locking > down > those parameters and making them only adjustable through utility > software > might be enough keep guest ops from experimenting with controls that > can do > the most harm on the bands. > > Paul, W9AC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
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In reply to this post by John Fritze
My "FD" experience was a bit different. I operated some with my K3/10 "1D" from the home QTH with the old dipoles up on 75/40/20m. I wanted to play SSB QRP and see what kind of fun I could have. I used HamRadio Deluxe, PSDR for interface then spotted and pounced. I only ran for a couple 2 or 3 hrs and very casually. I had about an equal number of QSOs on 20 and 40 with just a handful on 75, since the operations were mostly mid afternoon Saturday. It seemed that the 20m QSOs were easier than 40m, with seems counter intuitive. I use a Softrock on the IF to drive PSDR and I chose mostly the stronger stations to pounce on, but not all, by any means. One really neat 75m QSO was working W0CIA who was running an 817 at 3w from the top of a fire tower somewhere here in northern MN. Lots of positive comments on the good signal for the 10-12watts. I ran with the Elecraft hand mike and the compression set at 16. I only recently started using compression at all, and it makes a very big difference. Been hamming 55yrs and never used compression on any of my previous gear. Old dogs can learn new tricks. The local club had a Field Day station I visited over the weekend, I ran a bit of 40m with a Kenwood 450. Very smooth little rig to operate, but it seemed I had to call more than at home QRP. Lots more adjacent frequency QRM and I sure missed the Softrock panadapter. My K3/10 spends most of its life as my 6m - 10Ghz IF rig. Bill K0AWU K3-3xxx ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
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