[Elecraft] Fw: Elecraft info

[Philip Westover]

Hi Everyone,

A good friend of mine wrote the following to me, and I was hoping I might 
get some comments from this list.  He is working on incorporating an 
Elecraft noise blanker into his old KWM-380.

> I looked at the noise blankers for the Elecraft K1 and K2 and they seem to 
> be fine for my KWM-380.  Since they are small boards, I will mount them on 
> a larger board as I must build a mixer circuit using double balanced 
> mixers from the Collins 39 MHz to the Elecraft if frequency of 4.014 MHz.
>
> The K1 noise blanker uses discrete components, whereas the K2 uses an 
> integrated circuit for the same function.  The KNB1 is $35, while the KNB2 
> is $39.  In either case, I will not install the decoding and simply 
> hardwire the functions and have simply an on/off controlled by on board 
> relays.
>
> The question is this:  Which noise blanker was designed later?  I would 
> assume that either the later designed unit used feedback from the earlier 
> unit.  If that is the KNB1, it may be that they found they could save a 
> few components and still have the same blanker.
>
> Which brings up the second question, has there been any feedback about 
> whether one or the other blanker works better?
>
> I am getting things really working well on the KWM-380.  With a lot of 
> work, it should be almost as good as the Ten Tec Paragon II (which is 
> worth about 1/3 as much).  There is a KWM-380 on eBay right now that is 
> owned by Ronnie Milsap.  Price is $3550, but the reserve has not been met.

I'd appreciate any input I could get to help my friend.

- Phil, WA7URV
K1 #220
K2 #2690
KX1 #218