[Elecraft] Just how good is the K2?

[George, W5YR]

Dan, you make some good points and knowing you as one who has been in the
trenches on the other end of the Pack more than once, I greatly respect your
opinion.

I suspect that you are right about my K2 needing some TLC and upgrading.
However, you mentioned that your main signal processing tools are CW-R,
filter bandwidth and AF filter. These I have found inadequate but that
likely is due to my lack of operating skill using only these tools. Guess
the PRO2 has really spoiled me!  <:}

If you can handle our Fox Hunt pileups with only those tools to aid you,
then I am missing the boat and need to correct both my own operating
practices and the condition of my K2.

Yes, a couple of folks have taken umbrage that I would dare suggest that a
PRO2 was the equal to a K2, and I may have been overly outspoken in that
regard for which I apologize to the reflector group. Yet, my intentions were
fair and honorable: I only wanted to try to understand why someone would
sell an FT1000D or a PRO2 and rely solely upon a little K2 for the main
station rig when my experience argued strongly against such a move. Your
note has done a lot to answer that question, Dan.

I appreciate your taking time to help me out. See you again in your next
Hunt! And many thanks for past pelts!

73, George W5YR
w5yr@att.net


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Presley" <dpresley1@comcast.net>
To: "George, W5YR" <w5yr@att.net>
Cc: <elecraft@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 12:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Just how good is the K2?


> Hi George-well, I played extensively both with the Pro2 and a FT
> 1000MP, and the IMD products drove me nuts! I could easily hear sigs
> on the K2 that were garbled or unreadable on the Pro,the 1000MP and a
> T-T Corsair II ( my next favorite cw rig). In the heat of battle as a
> fox, I can say that the K2 beats all of the other radios I've used (
> haven't tried an Orion yet). It's the only one that didn't fold up
> under the assault of having hundreds of signals 'hurled' at me by the
> qrp crowd.I call it 'blow by', but a better phrase is IMD which I
> found objectionable on the Icom and Yaesu, and the Corsair.All of the
> other radios were not able to sort out multiple signals, and no
> amount of audio/dsp/notch filtering would solve that-it's a design
> issue. Might be different if I was just chasing one signal, but I use
> the cw reverse, filters and audio filters, and haven't been flummoxed
> yet. We all hear things differently, and I hope no one has been
> obnoxious just because you expressed another opinion :). I am
> wondering if some of the mods ( mine is #1010-with all updates except
> the crystal grounding) and careful alignment with spectrogram might
> make a difference in your rig. I talk with a fair number of dxers and
> dxepedtioners, and a lot of them are ditching the
> Icoms/Yaesus/Kenwoods for K2s due to superior performance, especially
> in weak signal stuff like 160, and also on dxepedtions for the IMD
> performance.
> I do appreciate a lot of your posts to this and qrp-l .Maybe look at
> 'tweaking' your K2-might be a new rig :)
> -- 
> Dan Presley-N7CQR-Portland, Or QRP-L #502
> n7cqr@arrl.net