[Elecraft] little OT: sweating the details + K3 RX Equalizer

[Fred Jensen]

Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
> Ha, ha! You are quite right Charles. In the 1950's a great many Hams looked
> askance at anyone operating a factory built rig. "Appliance Operator" was a
> highly pejorative term more often whispered about someone than spoken aloud
> in polite company.

Well ... maybe there's another way to look at the changes from the "good 
old days."  In the 50's, the common ham station was a commercial or 
maybe surplus receiver [BC-348?] and a home brew or converted WW2 
surplus transmitter.  Very few people tinkered with their receiver ... I 
never had a 75A4 as a kid, but be assured, if I had had one, I wouldn't 
have gone into it with a hot soldering gun.  I did build and tinker with 
my transmitters, they were mainly converted surplus and a couple of home 
brew attempts, I was a teen and perennially broke.  My Dad bought me a 
surplus R-388 which I kept for many years.  He said the rest was up to me.

Transceivers pushed the separates out about the time SSB was coming on 
the scene.  If I had to credit one with being the BROTB [big radio on 
the block], I'd probably pick the KWM-1/2.  You still didn't take a hot 
soldering gun to the receiver part of your transceiver, and now, the 
transmitter part was integral to the radio and it did not experience the 
heat of a gun either.  Think for a moment ... do you have a stand-alone 
receiver in your shack that you'd go into?  A stand-alone transmitter? 
I might have an old ARC-5 transmitter in the basement, but it's probably 
missing the VFO capacitor.  The only stand alone receivers in our house 
are the TV's, and we have two stand alone radios in our vehicles.

Times changed.  All three of my Elecraft radios are transceivers.  I 
built the KX1 and K2, I "assembled" my K3.  I use them, I don't tinker 
with them.  I can't even see many of the parts in the K3 without the 
magnifier.  All of my HT's, and I have too many, are transceivers.  I 
don't think there's anything wrong with this set of circumstances.  I 
start my truck with a key into the steering column, sort of different 
than cranking it from under the radiator, and I like the key better. 
Times, and the things we use, just changed.  Ham radio is more fun for 
me now than when I listened with the R-388 and sometimes equally 
exciting.  We still tinker with antennas, interfaces between our radios 
and our laptop computers [who foresaw those things back in the 50's], 
and station setups and configuration.
> 
> I believe the lack of chirps, clicks and poorly modulated phone signals on
> the bands today is a warning sign. Not enough Hams are tinkering, playing
> and learning how to build rigs or how the rig they have works.
> 
> Worse, those signals are so rare these days there are some Hams who think
> they should be illegal.

I had a job as a relief operator at a coastal marine station during my 
high school senior year.  I spent a lot of time listening to the "Holy 
Wavelength" [600m].  The quality of the signals was atrocious ... hum 
modulation beating with the MCW, clicks that would make an unmodified 
FT-1000 sound perfect, and chirp that would take the signal all the way 
out of the passband of todays' receivers -- not a problem in 1957, 
passbands were different then :-)  Fists were terrible, and those were 
the good ones.  You can find some 600m recordings on the I'net from 
those years, and as late as the 70's.  You'll be amazed if you remember 
what the ham bands sounded like at the same time.

I was also a ham of 3 years, and the vast majority of the signals in the 
ham bands were clean, well keyed, clickless, and chirpless.  Made me 
sort of proud to be a young ham.

> Much of what I learned the first few years on the air came from fellow Hams
> who patiently answered my questions and made suggestions. I try to repay
> them in a small way by taking the time to answer questions and encourage
> others today. 

That all still happens.  There's a young fellow down the road who is 
getting interested in the "magic of wireless."  I help him.

K3 RX Equalizer:  My hearing is shot, it disappeared one night 40+ years 
ago on a mountain top on the other side of the planet.  I have been 
hoping that the RX Eq might compensate enough to get me back onto SSB. 
Several folks have asked me to report on this, I've lost your email 
addresses, so I'll do it here.

NAQP SSB yesterday was the first test drive of my K3 on SSB.  I know 
what my hearing curve looks like, the VA gave me a copy.  I experimented 
trying to "invert" the curve with the EQ settings.  I finally found some 
settings that helped quite a bit.  16 dB isn't nearly enough range for 
me, but might be for someone with less hearing loss.  I tried faking it 
to 32dB by rolling the low frequencies [for which I still have some 
hearing] way down, and boosting the higher frequencies and then turning 
the AF gain way up, but that wasn't really too effective.

It's really a personal thing, and you just need to "tinker" with it 
some, but I'm reasonably happy.

And in the "Happy Ham Department," I made 198 Q's in the contest.  I am 
using the Heil Proset from Elecraft, and I haven't messed with the TX Eq 
yet.  I began to get compliments on my audio, I started counting them, 
and 11 people told my my audio was great.  I told one "First time for my 
K3 on SSB."  He said, "Oh, K3?  No wonder."

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2008 Cal QSO Party  4-5 Oct 08
- www.cqp.org