[Elecraft] K3: WPX CW

[Ron Chambers]

Thought I'd DITTO Lee's message. I had not been able to make a Q on
the K3 till this weekend (had assembled it at home, but antennas are
60 miles away at contest station KC5FU).

So thought I'd use WPX as a nice test (no pun intended). Made about
500 Q's with no issues....the K3 drove a QRO2500....mostly on 40m and
20m....only have one 400hz filter in it...didn't need anything else,
even when 14034 was crammed pack!

It is everything thing I thought it would be!

Forgot that I hadn't updated WriteLog in some time, so missed out
checking all the functions between K3 and PC.

Ron
N5QQ




Message: 30
Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:22:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lee Buller <k0wa at swbell.net>
Subject:
To: Elecraft Reflector <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Message-ID: <259292.57141.qm at web81301.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1



I did not have time this weekend to put in a full effort in WPX CW.
To much planned and to many Super Cell Thunderboomers rolling through
the plains of Kansas.

Just a few comments about the K3....SN:443 Latest Firmware

1.  The rig operated flawlessly for the 5 hours I was on...not a true
test, but good for me.

2.  The K3 worked well with the AL80A amp and drove it to 900 watts
with about 60 watts of power.  SWR was always good beteen the K3 and
the amp on 40-20-15 meter bands.  TX Delay was set at 8 and then at 15
with no issues that I could determine in timing.

3.  Weak signal work was outstanding and copied very week signals from
the Pacific and Europe.  Use AGC-S for most of the time, but also
tried AGC-F.  There were very few "loud" stations on the band that
would rock your earphones, but there were few.  The AGC seemed to
handle most of them, but there were a few that it did not handle very
well.  A 500 Hz 5 pole filter was used for CW and did the job well.
Played with the bandwidth and used about 400 Hz BW in the end.  Of
course RIT was use with good results.

4.  The K3 seemed to remain very "cool" even though running at 32 wpm
for an hour.

5.  Never had the rig on 15 meters till this weekend.  No problems to
report.  Did not try 10 meters since there was no time in my busy
holiday weekend.

6  The K3 worked flawlessly with N1MM Logger.  Used keying from the4
LPT1 port and KUSB for rig control.

Not a lot of 40 meter action here due to very large storms (tornadoes)
and a huge amount of lightening rolling though the area.  Shut down
each evening around 8 pm because of lightening and disconnected the
antenna and rotor lines.
Went to see Indiana Jones Movie.  In the morning, 40 proved to me
pretty good working the Pacific with a dipole and 800 watts

Overall....the K3 was super!

Final Note:  There would be some nice additions to the software, but
are not really worth mentioning here because I am not familiar with
the rig enough to know if they are already available in firmware.  I
am behind in figuring out what is new from the last edition of the
manual.  So, I will not comment until I can get a handle on the
functions of the firmware.

Lee - K0WA