As has been the case for the past several years the only K3 control I touched during the CW SS was the tuning knob because there was never any reason to futz with anything else. Whatever settings I had simply worked for every condition during the weekend, and besides, I always seemed to be focused on signals and never on the rig itself, thanks to this ability of the K3 to vanish while you're using it. This year I operated with DUAL PB for the entire contest. With the context bandwidth set to 500 Hz it sounded tight and open at the same time... really interesting... and I found it to be free of ringing. The K3 is so highly configurable and DUAL PB is just one more way to make it sound consistently fresh.
Tonight I started thinking about the next contest -- the best contest of the year, may I say-- which is the 160 meter contest in less than two weeks, and so I set up the N6RK receiving loop and diversity reception. In so doing, I reminded myself of the major reason why I got the K3 all those years ago. As I type this I'm listening to 80 in diversity and it's almost spooky hearing signals swim around in the soundstage of my headphones. What would have been a deep fade turns into the gentle movement of the signal from left (main receiver on the horizontal) to right (sub on the loop) and back again. Amazing. If you haven't tried diversity, it's worth the effort. There's KI6BZT in Oakland, slightly biased toward the left headphone, occasionally leaking right of center, talking to K6UIP in Encinitas slammed to the right. And sure enough, Neil says he's on a vertical antenna. And further down the band, at 3508, an HK0 calling CQ, who I don't think I could have had a chance of hearing without diversity. I'm sure I'll hear you on the 160, thanks to DUAL PB and diversity, but you probably won't hear me (but that's not the K3's fault; unfortunately, I'm on a very small city lot). I'll make my 50 contacts, and I hope you're one of them. Al W6LX ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
