Our field testers are a very diligent and experienced bunch. They've
been working hard (on your behalf, as well as theirs) to exercise every
possible K3 feature and uncover opportunities for refinement.
The firmware development team (Wayne, N6KR, and Lyle, KK7P) has been
putting in very long hours to keep up, and we've made some minor
component changes as well. As a result, important features like FSK
mode, text decode/display, flexible VOX control, KRC2 support and many
others are being optimized under real-world conditions. We've also
verified our performance on multiple K3s both in the lab and on the air.
The field testers have really pounded on the user interface, and the
tweaking we've done has made the radio both easier to use and more
versatile.
The same engineers who are doing firmware and hardware development are
also heavily involved in completing the user documentation. This is why
we haven't been able to release a draft owner's manual or assembly
manual. We've got a lot of catching up to do on these tasks, so we're
revising our target shipping date for the first K3 production run to
start at the end of August.
K3 materials purchasing and manufacturing is well underway and our staff
has been working hard to make sure all of the key K3 components arrive
in Aptos at the right time. This is a tremendous task, as you might
imagine, and they have done an excellent job hunting down every problem
supplier and component. Our production staff will use the extra time to
build inventory and refine our automated K3 testing. This will allow us
to minimize any delay to the second and later production runs. Our goal
is to ship a stable, and high quality, product starting with the first
one out the door. We think you will be pleased with our results.
We appreciate your patience as we transition into full K3 production.
We'll keep you informed of our progress, and look forward to your
feedback on the manuals as they near completion. We've already had many
offers to proofread -- thanks!
73,
Wayne, N6KR
Eric, WA6HHQ
_..._
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