Last year I saw our UK distributor was advertising that the K4 was
available from them with a 6 to 8 week delivery. I suspect they may have
had some on “pre order”. I managed to sell my K3/P3, and took delivery of a
K4D in just under 8 weeks from ordering.
I wasn’t able to conduct an A/B comparison between the K3 and K4 as I sold
the K3 privately first.
I am mostly a CW operator and find the bandwidths right down to 50 or 100
Hz on the K4 are much clearer than they were on the K3. With the K3 I had
250 and 400 Hz filters in the main RX and 400 Hz in the sub, I tended to
use 300 to 400 Hz b/w and accepted the additional noise on the lower bands,
narrower bandwidths generally didn’t often sound good on my K3.
Receive audio on the K4 is a lot smoother than the K3 and the noise
reduction works well without the messing around you had with the K3. Noise
reduction on the K3 doesn’t work properly regardless of how much you play
around with the settings.
Being a full SDR, on data modes the power (and audio drive level) doesn’t
vary across the passband. On FT8 the K3 required adjustment as you changed
TX tone frequency, not that I am a fan of FT8 but have used it an odd time.
On a K4 you have three serial ports that are isolated from each other, so
you can run data with rig control via one program and have a separate
program read the frequency to log it without any conflict.
With a sub receiver fitted to a K3 you hard wired it to use the main
antenna, or a separate rear panel socket. Changing the config involved
quite a bit of dismantling. You just press a front panel button on the K4D…
My original K3 needed an external preamp on 6m, the K4 is much more
sensitive.
The spectrum display was OK on the P3, but the K4 with the auto level works
great and you generally don’t need to change the reference level. If you
want to impress visitors, hook up a 40 inch 4K TV via HDMI, the display is
stunning but IMO not practical in most shacks.
The jack sockets on the K4 are much better quality and a tighter fit than
the K3.
For SSB the K4 is getting controlled envelope SSB in the next firmware
release which is a big improvement compared to conventional compression.
There has been much discussion about the K4HD version, but as Wayne said,
few are likely to need the added expense of crystal roofing filters. OK,
you will get a receiver that is placed higher on the Rob Sherwood list, but
that only sometimes may make a difference if you have nearby ham neighbours
in the same CW contest. In my case, I haven’t experienced any problems with
adjacent signals with my K4D. In the past I couldn’t approach within 30 or
40 KHz of a QRO neighbour (just under 2 miles away) on 80m CW with my K3.
Unfortunately he sadly went SK some time ago, so I cannot really say if my
K4D would have been any worse… don’t assume a K4HD will necessarily allow
you to operate close to nearby QRO stations in your neighbourhood.
A K3S with sub RX, P3, DVR, external reference, P3 external monitor board,
etc. cost more in 2017 than a K4D does today. Use the Wayback machine to
check out those K3 prices.
73 Dave G4AON
K4D #286
KPA500
--
Sent from my iPhone SE
__
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net
This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
