Good morning,
I first want to congratulate the "crew" with the birth of a new TRCV. I hope
their effort will pay-off one way or another.
For me personally as a serious VHF operator (don't worry, also HF) I did
have two issues with the K2 from which I hope they have been addressed in
the K3.
1) When active on MS (Meteor Scatter) or EME (Moonbounce) you are
running high power amplifiers (I guess) and low-noise preamps. To take full
advantage of the low-noise preamps, they have to be mounted close to the
antenna together with the coaxial relay. To prevent blowing Gas-Fets you
have to have a sequencer. So, switch over the relay, get the Amp in TX mode
and only then after a short while start driving the Amp. As transmitting is
initiated by the transceiver (PTT or Key) the transceiver will just start to
delivering power. The best way to tackle this problem is to make a
TX-Request available on one of the connectors. If the sequencer completed
it's switch-over cycle, the Request has to be Aknowledged (TX-Ack) to the
transceiver. If, like most of you, don't need this option, a connection
between the REQ and AKN would just "short circuit" this feature. (This was
a very practical solution used by Ten-Tec. I had a Paragon for the last 18
years).
2) As could be seen from the reflector, the Noise Blanker of the K2
is/was an issue. I lived in urban areas for several years, and my experience
was that it didn't do what I expected. Now I live in the open field, but
with electric fences. It still doesn't do the job. My Drake TR7 ( I don't
know how they did it) just kills all unwanted signals except the "lids". I
wonder if the NB in the K3 could come close to the TR7-NB. I really hope so!
I really love my K2 with it's extreme good Price/Quality performance. I
think even Elecraft itself won't be able to beat this P/Q factor. But at the
end, we are all like little kids; we want more.. a K3.
73's, Evert PA2KW
Happy owner of:
Elecraft K2/100 (SN4836)
Drake TR7/R7
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