[Elecraft] K3 shipping status update

[Eric Swartz WA6HHQ - Elecraft]

Our field testers are a very diligent and experienced bunch. They've 
been working hard (on your behalf, as well as theirs) to exercise every 
possible K3 feature and uncover opportunities for refinement.

The firmware development team (Wayne, N6KR, and Lyle, KK7P) has been 
putting in very long hours to keep up, and we've made some minor 
component changes as well. As a result, important features like FSK 
mode, text decode/display, flexible VOX control, KRC2 support and many 
others are being optimized under real-world conditions.  We've also 
verified our performance on multiple K3s both in the lab and on the air. 
The field testers have really pounded on the user interface, and the 
tweaking we've done has made the radio both easier to use and more 
versatile.

The same engineers who are doing firmware and hardware development are 
also heavily involved in completing the user documentation. This is why 
we haven't been able to release a draft owner's manual or assembly 
manual. We've got a lot of catching up to do on these tasks, so we're 
revising our target shipping date for the first K3 production run to 
start at the end of August.

K3 materials purchasing and manufacturing is well underway and our staff 
has been working hard to make sure all of the key K3 components arrive 
in Aptos at the right time. This is a tremendous task, as you might 
imagine, and they have done an excellent job hunting down every problem 
supplier and component. Our production staff will use the extra time to 
build inventory and refine our automated K3 testing. This will allow us 
to minimize any delay to the second and later production runs. Our goal 
is to ship a stable, and high quality, product starting with the first 
one out the door. We think you will be pleased with our results.

We appreciate your patience as we transition into full K3 production. 
We'll keep you informed of our progress, and look forward to your 
feedback on the manuals as they near completion. We've already had many 
offers to proofread -- thanks!

73,
Wayne, N6KR
Eric, WA6HHQ

_..._