[Elecraft] [K3] Split Operation in contest

[Olivier F5MZN]

Hi -

We switched to K3's for our contest station FY5KE, in replacements of 
our 20-year old Kenwood TS-850. We are now getting ready our equipment 
for the coming contest season. So far so good, we are quite happy with 
the K3 which is really a great radio. There is only one detail I would 
like to have your opinion about.

 From everywhere outside US, we are used to operate split on 40 (and 
sometimes on 80 as well), transmitting and also sometimes listening in 
the "European segment" as well (you know, "listening 7205 and my 
frequency", for example). With our Kenwood radios, we had an external 
toggle switch located just near the computer keyboard. This switch was 
connected to the ACC3 connector (front panel remote) of the TS-850 in 
order to remotely command the TF-SET button. That way, we were able to 
easely choose which of the TX or RX frequency to listen. Using such an 
external switch, it was not necessary to hold the finger on the TF-SET 
button and this was very confortable.

The REV button of the K3 is relatively similar to the TS-850's TF-SET 
one, except that it is not possible to transmit when this switch is 
pressed. It means that the op must think to release the REV button 
before any transmission (and to press it right after the end of the 
transmission if he need to listen again his TX frequency). On the other 
hand, it is necessary to hold the finger on that button which is not 
confortable, especially when operating SOAB.

I wonder if someone around got a way to deal with that problem. Of 
course, a the possible solution would be to get the sub-receiver... 
which we didn't included in our order!

An "easy" way would be to have a new entry in the menu in order to 
modify the behaviour of the REV button in that manner: a single tap on 
the REV button will focus the headphones to the TX frequency. Another 
single tap on the REV button will focus back the headphone to the split 
frequency (normal split operation). I wonder if that would be possible 
to implement such a behaviour in the next firmware.

Thanks in anticipation for your comments,

Best 73,
-- 
Olivier / F5MZN, op at FY5KE, TM2Y, TM6I