[Elecraft] WPX K3 impressions..

[cx7tt at 4email.net]

WPX contest with K3/Acom 1000 and 3 ele Steppir @ 40ft.....a lot of fun 
although condx were pretty poor here in the 'southern cone' for a little 
pistol station. Mi amigo, CX6VM aka CW5W, did very FB job from his nice 
contest station about 400km from here. I listened to his pileup several 
times and he was working Qs that were ESP here...but then he has tall 
towers and big iron..."Congrats, Jorge".
The K3 was a pleasure to operate in this contest. I generally did S&P as 
I could not get anything going with Cqing...the exception was Sat 
afternoon when had very nice EU pileup on 10m then later 15m. About the 
RIT...I dont particularly care for using the RIT when running a 
pileup...my preference is work split. The K3 was very easy to do this 
with: A>B, Split, then call CQ...that way I can use the big knob to fine 
tune the callers which are off frequency (happens a lot).

My request for firmware change is to have a method to "Lock" VFO B so I 
dont 'bump' the knob and lose my pileup. How about when "Split" 
activated, "Lock" applies to VFO B?

A "tip of the cap" to Windy, KM5Q (I think it was you) who suggested 
using CWT to fine tune the RF gain control...worked super! Major 
'Ah-Ha'. There were times when PRE not needed at all and others when PRE 
with RF gain backed off made the difference in working guys or not.

No AGC issue here with strong stations as the 1 skip zone falls in PY 
land...the very few Monster stations were easily taken out with the 
DSP...I have the 1.8, 500 and 250 roofing filters.

Finally, I also have a Orion II and can do A/B test between the two 
rigs....cw is not even close...although the O II is a fine rig, there is 
an annoying hiss which is much louder than the background noise of the 
K3; have to almost constantly move the RFGain control to stay on top of 
that with the O II....the NR is STILL a work in progress w/TenTec...way 
too much distortion at even a "2" rating. With the K3, I never use NR on 
cw as the DSP does FB job. The O II is fatiguing to listen too compared 
to the K3. OTOH, I do like the SSB sound of the O II better...it seems 
much 'fuller' than the K3. Not that important to me as I do not do much 
SSB. I probably need to delve into the K3 RX equal settings and play 
with that...anybody got recommended RX settings for SSB?

73
Tom
CX7TT
K3 #250