Since I don't have my own station (towers and such) at the moment, I put up 3 quarter wave vertical wires in a pair of pine trees in my front yard. (Visible antennas are not allowed in my neighborhood, so these are tucked away out of sight) I have one for 80, 40 and 20, each with a single 1/4 wave radial running through the bushes. They are ground mounted and I switch between them with a remote coax switch. I use the K3s internal tuner to allow me to use the 40M on 15M and the 80M on 10M and 160M. I got my K3 on Thursday and just HAD to play around a bit in a contest (which is my primary interest in radio), so the NAQP was the one I picked for this weekend. I'm having a ball and finding the rig is making my terrible antenna situation almost bearable. I won't pretend to know the math and electronics as to why, but SSB signals are jumping out of the K3 very clearly. Apparently, I even got near (within 1.5 kHz) the Slow Scan TV boys on 14230 and was still blazing away calling CQ with a good rate. They finally had enough of me and moved right on top of me, but I was so impressed that the K3 handled it all VERY well and the SSTV signal were transparent to me. I'm finding the front panel ergonomics and screen interface reactions to be fantastic. The needed information is popped on the screen and then goes back to the primary information as it is supposed to. My old Heil headset with the HC-4 (or 5, I forget which one is for contesting) plugged directly into the rig and I tailored the TX audio to my liking. It apparently is a big hit on the other end too as I am getting many unsolicited "great audio" comments during the contest. I'm watching the PA temp just because I'm curious to see the differences between K3 and K2 heat sink temps during contests, but the temp is moving up only 5-10 degs C on long transmits. Sure, this is low duty cycle SSB, but I'm hitting it pretty hard (COMP and Audio Gain are aggressive) into marginal antennas with 45 minutes of straight CQing before I switch to hunt & pounce mode for a while. The VOX is so smooth and I'm doing all this without a voice keyer, so the rig is handling all my various coughs and spurts very well. I gotten a chance to play with the NB and NR features and finally learned to set the parameter that keeps them both on as I move through the bands. I've adjusted the DSP and hardware settings to see how things react, but I can always find a way to clean up noise. I'm VERY impressed and can't wait to get this rig on REAL antennas in a CW contest in the near future. Bob K5WA K3 #234 K2 #5119 (listed on eBay) K2 #4687 (about to be listed on eBay) K3 #xxx (unknown, but coming in a couple of months) ;-) _______________________________________________ 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
