[Elecraft] New Eham.net K3 review by QRPNEW

[R. Kevin Stover]

I can remember maybe a half dozen or so for sale notices for K3's on 
this list in the last year. Including HB9DRV's and the other you 
mentioned. Lets call it 10 to be generous. I haven't seen many for sale 
anywhere, QRZ, E-Ham, eBay, etc.... Add them all up from all sources 
call it 100. 100 out of 2500+ built and not all of those 100 have been 
sold because it's not a great radio.

I suspect a vast majority of those sold were sold because the user 
couldn't get their head around the hybrid nature of the K3. Part 
traditional superhet, part SDR.

The K3 is not an appliance operator's radio. You need to pay attention 
to what you are fiddling with in the menu's. The chances of someone 
taking the K3 right out of the box and getting it tweaked for max 
performance without cracking the manual are slim to none. How many posts 
have we seen on this list from folks asking questions which are clearly 
answered in the manual?

There is a paradigm shift coming to Ham Radio with SDR and the new 
technologies. Radio's are going to get smaller with fewer knobs. The 
Flex 5000 doesn't have a single knob on it. The Flex 3000 is smaller 
than my laptop and also has no knobs.

The Ten-Tec Orion I/II, the first SDR/hybrid, is a colossal waste of 
sheet metal. There's four circuit boards in the Orion. They could have 
put the same four boards in something the size of the Jupiter. Matter of 
fact they pretty much did with the OMNI VII.

There are always going to be people who run something down because it 
doesn't work the way they THINK it should work or it requires more 
mental effort than plug and play. It's amazing to me that some Hams will 
spend 10's of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on towers and 
antennas looking for that last fraction of a dB in gain but when the 
radio they bought has a sub par receiver they'll ignore that simply 
because the box is big and has the required 70 knobs/controls.

Or, is the 5 digit price tag?

Julian G4ILO wrote:
> At least one already has, if you look back a few days. He chose not to
> share his reasons with the group, but he did with me, as I was nosey
> enough to ask, and several of the reasons he gave echo what "QRPNEW"
> has just written.
> 
> Julian, G4ILO


-- 
R. Kevin Stover, ACØH