[Elecraft] Thoughts and question

[Guy Olinger, K2AV]

"Why are so many up for sale?"

Respectfully disagreeing...

Whether on purpose or not, your question is the classic negative
statement framed as a baiting question. In order to answer the
question one must accept the premise. As in "When did you quit beating
your wife."

Also, at the same time, the "TV proportionality problem." As in two
people are setting at the table watching TV. The commentator expresses
what could be proven to be very much a minority opinion in the
country, 200 million to 1 million. One person at the table agrees, the
other not. What is the outcome of the vote at the table, 200,000,001
against the TV opinion vs. 1,000,002 for, or two for and one against.
Any married person of some years with any power of observation knows
the frustrating answer to that question.

The first issue is that one must accept the premise, "so many up for
sale" in order to answer the question. At one time, I think I may have
seen at most three at a time for sale, counting the occasional one on
EBay. That would be three out of 4000 out there, or
a mere 0.075%. If I had the data to remove the numbers that were built
for sale by habitual kit-builders (I don't), the percentage is even
smaller. Or put another way, "so many up for sale" is simply
inaccurate.

The temptation to think "so many up for sale" is the TV
proportionality problem. You own one. The reflector is selling three.
The vote is three for sale, one not. This is an overwhelmingly common
perceptive trap that is rooted in our tribal instincts. That is, for
one's own personal safety in cave man days, knowing that a 10 to 5
vote in the group present and capable of murder must be considered.
However, mass media has completely undone that, and information over
the media needs to be taken in a careful, completely non-instinctive,
statistically proportional manner.

As to the crystal business, one must be careful in one's comparisons,
and have enough input to accurately place the K2 on a scale with other
alternatives.

If you buy filters from Yaesu for a FT1000MP, a common (I did it)
starting configuration is the stock, wired-in, definitely-not-so-great
500 Hz crystal in the 8 MHz IF, and the (frankly disappointing)
Collins "500 Hz" mechanical filter in the plug-in 455 kHz IF.

The upgraded, bottom-soldered K2 filter is at least as good as that,
and adjustable to boot.

Actually, the Collins 500 Hz was nice for listening around on the
band, but really inadequate for contesting on the lower bands, nearly
useless in a 160m contest.

The gold standard for MP's is to remove the wired Yaesu 500 Hz, put
the Collins filter in the aux RX filter slot, and populate the main RX
500 Hz positions with 400 Hz Inrads, giving one breathtaking skirts
that can render a clickless 30 over S9 signal INAUDIBLE up or down 500
Hz.

Thus far on the market, without a great deal of information on the
Orion, nothing tops cascaded Inrads. To say that the K2 does not top
the selectivity gold standard, from many elicits a puzzled "And your
point was?" Quickly followed by a "How much money did you want to
spend for your K2?"

Put yours up for sale on this reflector (better results than EBay) and
see how long it lasts...

73, Guy
K2AV,
K2 #1279
Fully Inradded MP

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "gwlillie" <gwlillie@adelphia.net>


It looks like the K2 is on its last leg as far as improvements and
upgrades are concerned judging by the new firmware release.Which with
me personally has little to offer. That does not mean I won't buy them
though. The K2 is as good as it is going to get and I want to keep it
current. I am very disappointed that a improvement in cystal filters
wasn't attemped. In only my opinion I think this is the only weak area
to the K2 and keeps it from being ever greater. Why are so many up for
sale?

N8GW
K2100   #3091