[Elecraft] K3 Beta F/W Release 3.19 for FD Ops... In case you missed the announcement

[Tom Hammond]

Folks:

If you're taking your K3 out to Field Day this year, AND especially 
if you're going to have unfamiliar (I call 'em 'fiddley-fingered') 
ops using the rig on SSB (especially), there is a feature recently 
released in BETA firmware release 3.19 which you might be interested in.

Over the past years, one of the MAJOR(!) problems our Field Day SSB 
stations have had to contend with was uninitiated SSB ops messing 
with the MIC GAIN, COMPRESSION LEVEL, and POWER OUTPUT LEVEL... 
trying to achieve an indicated "100W" on the output meter... Of 
course, you and I know that virtually all built-in power meters in 
just about any rig ('cept the K3) indicate some form of AVERAGE POWER 
OUTPUT, especially on SSB.

Given the ballistics of the needles in the power meter and the 
vagaries of the human voice, when you're actually putting out 100W of 
RF, you're lucky if you see an INDICATED 25W-30W on the 
meter!!!  Some newer rigs offer PEAK OUTPUT indications, but not 
many.  As a result it's (almost) human nature to want to try to TURN 
THE WICK up as far as possible, to get that last milliwatt of RF out 
the back of the rig... UNfortunately, we do this not realizing that, 
in almost all instances, we have managed to mangle our transmitted 
audio so badly that the op on the other end can't make heads or tails 
out of the exchange we're trying to convey.  Our Bad!!!

Enter he K3's most recent feature addition:  MIC / CMP / PWR LOCK...!

Now, you (the K3 owner) can preset the MIC GAIN, COMPRESSION, and 
OUTPUT POWER LEVEL to levels you know are suitable for  your K3 and 
your users, and you can LOCK those three settings so that no amount 
of button twiddling by (most) users will be able to crank them out of range.

You can read the docs on the new release and then download firmware 
v. 3.19 from Elecraft now.

Just a thought.

73,

Tom Hammond   N0SS