I have done 1 to 6, homebrew receivers and transmitters without any starting design, superhets and kilowatt transmitters, old push pull tube stuff, pi net continuous coverage, etc, plus the old heathkit stuff (lots of it), regens out of encyclopedias, home made circuit board things out of the ARRL handbook, home built computers, etc, and its all fun. The design/prototype/test part seems to be the most fun and educational for me, finding a good simple local oscillator design using junk box parts was very fun.
I think the K2 was a little over to the parts stuffing side of kit building, but with so many parts, it has its own flavor of kit building, and I rate it higher then the old heathkit stuff. And nothing heathkit ever designed worked so well, they always seemed to compromise performance severely over cost. It sure sounds like the K3 is case building and then you stuff the modules into slots, do some calibration, and operate. No way they could offer something as complex in any other format. I personally have no reason to upgrade to a K3 other than the AM receiver part. It sure would be nice if the K3 ends up having a good hi fidelity AM receiver in it. (20 to 5000 Hz, low distortion and noise) Many AMers are using old R390's and such, a truckload of tubes and gears, and it still needs work and an outboard amp to sound good. Most swl stuff is not setup to be a communications receiver, and most is poor for anything other than swl stuff. Modern ham gear seems to limit things to 300 to maybe 3000 Hz at 1.5 watts and 10% distortion, out of a 2 inch speaker... add in plenty of IC chip hash from the 4 conversions and they sound horrible on AM. I hear flex radio is doing amazing things on AM with their stuff, you can set the fidelity, modulation, compression, etc on both rx and tx, and they can sound better than broadcast stations, but I don't want a computer in the shack. I sure hope the K3 includes some of that type of stuff on the AM mode. I don't think I could sell the K2, but the 756 pro will be gone in a flash if the K3 has nice AM receive! Although I think the crew at elecraft are really amazing, maybe they shot themselves in the foot with the premature release of some k3 info, everyone is all lathered up now! I suppose its time to list the 756 pro on ebay.... Brett N2DTS _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
