[Elecraft] K3 panadaptor

[Jack Smith]

The enclosure, front/rear panels machined and silk screened and the LCD 
display alone clocked in at nearly $200 when purchased in small quantities.

I started work on a 2nd generation panadapter with color display and 
some new features but immediately stopped it when Elecraft announced 
that it was planning on a P3 panadapter.

Jack


Vic K2VCO wrote:
> Jack Smith wrote:
>
>> I did a one-time kit run of a stand-alone digital (LCD and DDS) 
>> panadapter 18 months ago, the Z90 and Z91 models. Z90 being 
>> self-contained with LCD and Z91 computer display only, no LCD.  Both 
>> used the same PCB and conversion from a Z91 to a Z90 requires adding 
>> a handful of parts. More details at my web site or through the QEX 
>> article I wrote on it.
>>
>> The Z90/91 works with any IF between 50 KHz and 70 MHz, although for 
>> some frequencies spurious signals generated by the DDS may  require 
>> an external  bandpass filter.
>>
>> The market for such a product turned out to be very limited. The 
>> original run was 45 total and it took six months to sell that run. In 
>> the following 18 months, I've probably received one inquiry per month 
>> on average.
>
> I was extremely interested in the standalone version, but found the 
> price prohibitive. I presume that the reason for this was the cost of 
> the display itself for a small number of units.
>
> Now that there are a lot of K3's in use, there is probably even more 
> interest in this kind of product and it might be possible for someone 
> to produce it in greater quantities, which might bring the price down.
>
> There has been some discussion of Elecraft bringing out a K3 
> panadaptor. Even if decide to do so, I wouldn't expect it for a while 
> because they seem to have their hands full with the K3 itself. 
> Unfortunately, this acts as a deterrent for the third-party guys, who 
> might find themselves competing with Elecraft!