[Elecraft] SN 176 on the air

[Steve Zumbrun]

Boy, what an experience.  Just putting this baby together was a religious 
experience.  What an incredible engineering feat to package everything in 
such an organized fashion.  I had difficulty on a couple of occasions:  I 
failed to mount the KXV3 rear panel over the BNC connectors before mounting 
the KXV3 board;  I failed to pay attention to the minus sign on the 
frequency offset for the roofing filter which caused an error during 
calibration.  Otherwise the build went ok.  It took my around 12 hours to 
wrap it all up and download the latest firmware.  I took me a while to 
figure out how to download the firmware from the internet.  The instructions 
are not very good for those of us who are computer challenged but I was able 
to figure it out.  The radio is superb.  The noise blanker and noise 
reduction works great even with the digital modes.  The wait for this radio 
was definitely well worth it.  Thanks again, Wayne, Eric and crew.  You have 
a winner here.  Best 73, Steve.