[Elecraft] Two K3's, Same Band, Same Time?

[Tom Hammond]

Hi Dan:

At 23:01 10/28/2008, Dan Levin wrote:
>For Sweepstakes, we are thinking about using a large multi-multi contesting
>station to house two separate single operator efforts.  The station has two
>yagi antennas on each band, separated by about 500 feet, and element tip to
>element tip when beaming the US (antennas pointed in parallel).
>
>The thought has crossed my mind that two K3's in such a situation might be
>able to deal with the other signal, even strong and so close, if one station
>is at the low end of the band (say 14005) and the other is at the high end
>of the band (say 14075).
>
>Would anyone care to weigh in about the likelihood of the receivers
>surviving such behavior?

For Field Day 2008, the Mid-MO ARC ran three 100W (3) K3s.

Each K3 used a multiband dipole.

The three dipoles were all strung, end-to-end, with about 40' of space BETWEEN
ends, in order to attempt to take as much advantage as possible of 
the inherent
null off the end of each dipole.

We very often found ourselves running at least two of the K3s on the same band
and a number of times, we found all three K3's on the same band (usually one
K3 on CW and the other two K3s on SSB).

While I'd be lying if I said there was NO DESENSE, I can state that the level
of desense was such than no operator (newbie or old hand) ever reported a
problem of significant front end overload or significant dense... period!
And you can bet that I'd have (eventually) heard about it if it'd been there!

The K3s performed SO MUCH BETTER than ANY other rig combinations we've used
over the years!  And the attention to front end design built into the K3 has
really caused it to shine as a top performer in the presence of nearby strong
signals.

We'll be running a 2-station special event activity this coming weekend:

   Halloween from Frankenstein (MISSOURI)

and the W0O special event call. We'll have two K3's operating here as well,
and we'll again be using two of the three multiband dipoles, end-to-end.
We expect no significant degradation in our ability to operate both stations
on the same band as in the past.

While this does not address QRO operation, it may help give you an idea of
what you might expect, given the proximity of the dipoles to each other.

73,

Tom Hammond    N0SS