If you worked W7MOT on either 15 or 40, you worked my K3. The operators using the K3 seemed very pleased with it. All who heard the diversity reception agreed that it is a valuable resource for copying in the face of QSB. For a second receive antenna we used a BuddiPole configured as vertical, tuned very roughtly to 15 without coil, and with a wire counterpoise. This provided sufficient receive signal on 40 as well as 15, with the subreceiver at full RF gain and the main receiver RF gain backed off.
Within the overall success of K3 operation a few glitches were observed. With diversity reception on I tried to demonstrate the cw tuning aid. No indication of received signal frequency was displayed (nothing to show that the received pitch was either on frequency or off). This may have been operator error, and in the rush for contest points I had no time to research or experiment. Anyway, the expected display was seen, minus the black mark that normally shows the received signal pitch relative to the expected pitch. I was running the latest official firmware release for the contest. I apologize for mentioning this without first investigating the conditions under which the problem may be repeatable, but, well, I am tired from operating late in the night... Operating CW using N1MM with LP-PAN and LP-Bridge and WinKeyer, 3 times during the contest I saw the mode unexpectedly change from CW to LSB at the time of transmitting. Although this had no negative impact on the contesting operation (just puch the mode control to recover), next year we obviously need to take some steps to reduce stray RF around the radio and computer. I have never had any such problem with the same setup at home, where the antennas are farther away. Our best CW operator voiced some slight disappointment that the setup did not produce the booming low-frequency notes of off-frequency CW signals that he favors. I have to agree that it is easier to distinguish between different stations when the pitch is low. Maybe I will ask Elecraft for the mod that I have seen mentioned that allows receive audio at lower frequencies. (Off the top of my head, I think it has been said on the list that the cutoff is 200 Hz.) 73, Erik K7TV ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
