For fun, I thought I'd provide an "East Coast" translation of this
recent announcement from Elecraft.
Enjoy!
73,
Steve NN4X
EL98jh
Message: 38
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:18:06 -0800
From: wayne burdick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Elecraft] K3 Subreceiver Status Update (KRX3 option)
To: Elecraft Reflector <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
I wanted to give those who've ordered a K3 subreceiver a status update.
First, thanks for your patience; I realize the subreceiver has been
significantly delayed. (This is also pushing out the DVR. Lyle, KK7P
and I are collaborating on the PCBs and firmware for both units.)
TRANSLATION: We've been stringing everyone along for, what...9 months
or so? We promised that very useful KRX3 option, and we're pretty
sure that more than a few folks have ordered the K3 based upon the
existence that option. THANKS for buying our sales
puffery! Unfortunately, we can't manage to bury the truth any
longer. Here's the deal: We're nowhere close to being ready on the KRX3.
When we release a product, it has to meet a number of criteria. Raw
performance by traditional measures is just one of these. Fortunately
the subreceiver has met our expectations in this regard, with dynamic
range virtually identical to that of the main.
TRANSLATION: blah blah blah blah...this is filler to divert your
attention...let's hope they take the bait.
But there are two other requirements that we must meet: excellent
mutual isolation between the main and receivers, and ease of
installation. Recently, we made the difficult decision that both must
be improved.
Isolation between the receivers is critical to usability. For example,
if you're listening to an extremely strong signal on one receiver, none
of it should leak into the other's I.F. After extensive testing, we
concluded that we were close, but needed more isolation.
Regarding installation: Someone with no experience should be able to
install or remove the subreceiver without much difficulty. The present
installation process is just a bit too complex once all other modules
and their associated cables are in place; the left side, chassis
stiffener, and several cables have to be removed. This has a secondary
effect, which is to make it very time-consuming to change crystal
filters on either receiver. We felt that we should improve this now,
before all fabrications were cast in stone.
TRANSLATION: Our first cut at a design, and the prototypes we've put
together from that, don't work very well. We've tried and tried, but
they just don't.
Both isolation and installation can be improved with changes to our
original KRX3 PCB layout. I'm working on this now. Once the PC board
and shield designs are complete, we'll quickly build first articles and
run them through all of the tests again.
TRANSLATION: We're doing a major re-design. Next come the prototypes
and testing. No idea when it'll be ready.
I'm confident that these improvements will allow the subreceiver to
live up to your expectations as well as ours. We'll post further
updates as we make progress.
TRANSLATION: We hope you'll latch onto this part of the spin, and not
think about how we've (once again) made promises we couldn't keep,
and didn't let you know until we couldn't explain it away anymore.
(I know, I know -- "Stop rambling and get back to work!")
TRANSLATION: Let's hope the cute signoff will take the edge off of
any anger that we haven't managed to nullify with the earlier part of
the announcement.
_. _. ...._ _.._ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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