I can remember maybe a half dozen or so for sale notices for K3's on this list in the last year. Including HB9DRV's and the other you mentioned. Lets call it 10 to be generous. I haven't seen many for sale anywhere, QRZ, E-Ham, eBay, etc.... Add them all up from all sources call it 100. 100 out of 2500+ built and not all of those 100 have been sold because it's not a great radio.
I suspect a vast majority of those sold were sold because the user couldn't get their head around the hybrid nature of the K3. Part traditional superhet, part SDR. The K3 is not an appliance operator's radio. You need to pay attention to what you are fiddling with in the menu's. The chances of someone taking the K3 right out of the box and getting it tweaked for max performance without cracking the manual are slim to none. How many posts have we seen on this list from folks asking questions which are clearly answered in the manual? There is a paradigm shift coming to Ham Radio with SDR and the new technologies. Radio's are going to get smaller with fewer knobs. The Flex 5000 doesn't have a single knob on it. The Flex 3000 is smaller than my laptop and also has no knobs. The Ten-Tec Orion I/II, the first SDR/hybrid, is a colossal waste of sheet metal. There's four circuit boards in the Orion. They could have put the same four boards in something the size of the Jupiter. Matter of fact they pretty much did with the OMNI VII. There are always going to be people who run something down because it doesn't work the way they THINK it should work or it requires more mental effort than plug and play. It's amazing to me that some Hams will spend 10's of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on towers and antennas looking for that last fraction of a dB in gain but when the radio they bought has a sub par receiver they'll ignore that simply because the box is big and has the required 70 knobs/controls. Or, is the 5 digit price tag? Julian G4ILO wrote: > At least one already has, if you look back a few days. He chose not to > share his reasons with the group, but he did with me, as I was nosey > enough to ask, and several of the reasons he gave echo what "QRPNEW" > has just written. > > Julian, G4ILO -- R. Kevin Stover, ACØH _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net 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
