[Elecraft] K2 wins...

[Andreas Hofmann]

My K2 #2555 is done for about 2 weeks and I did not have a chance to get
a decent antenna up.  So, the first couple of days, I was just listening
the bands with a little wire that I put up for the receiver alignment.
I did not hear that much and wondered whether it was poor propagation
condx, the short wire or some mistake(s) I made during the construction
of the rig.

Fortunately, Field Day came along.  My club did a joint FD event with
ICOM America. We got provided with 4 IC-756PRO II, thanks again to the
guys at ICOM America.  That gave me some opportunity to do some
side-by-side testing.  And it went well...

First, on Friday night I used an antenna tuner to make the short wire
appear ok to the rig in order to the tx alignment.  It took me about 3
hours to do the bandpass, filter and AF alignment using the Spectogram
software.

Many of you have reported this before, so just in short:
1. on the high bands there is not a big difference, I feel like the K2
can pick up a weak signal a little better but the rigs are very close.
No big deal
2. on the low bands, the signal in the K2 seems way louder. And, perhaps
the most important, there is much less background noise, QRM, QRN etc (I
don't care about s-meters, my ear was the decision maker). That is quite
amazing.  In many cases this makes the difference in whether a QSO
succeeds or not.  I am wondering what the problem is with the PRO, is it
just all the noise from the CPUs/MPUs, or just losses in those 2
additional receiver stages...?
=20

Note: I compared the rigs using a coax switch, using the same filter
widths, similar ATT and PRE settings, AF1/2 on the K2, added the DSP
(NR) on the PRO.  The DSP cleans up a lot on the PRO but it is not
enough. Also, I had 3 more hams around me to stay unbiased, hi. I also
made some contest QSOs and they went very well.  I noticed the
difference between 10W and 100W for sure, but a couple of more calls and
I was able to reach every station with the K2 as well...


So, I really want to thank everyone at Elecraft for giving me such an
awesome rig.  This will provide me with a lot of fun for my ham years to
come.  Also, thanks to all hams out there that make this rig even better
with all those useful mods.

Salute.

73
Andreas, AC7UC (ex DL6UST)


Now, on to a better antenna...