[Elecraft] K3 CW Contest Settings

[Al Lorona]

Hi, Rich, I will risk cluttering the reflector with a response.

A good contest rig becomes totally transparent during the contest. The Ten Tec Omni VI was such a rig. I think that the K3 will become like that once I get more familiar with it. I am a less-than-two-month owner and like you, the CW SS was my first contest with the K3. 

By "transparent" I mean, can one operate the entire contest using only the VFO knob? It is possible and when it happens you know you are concentrating on the contest rather than wasting brain power on the rig.

There were glimpses of transparency, though. Before the contest I got fancy and had set up N1MM to be able to switch between 1500 and 400 Hz bandwidths but after a few minutes I just left it at 400 and never touched it again. Similarly, this morning I had occasion to turn on NR, then forgot that it was on and it stayed on for the remainder of the contest. That's a rig that wants to become invisible. The same thing happened to me two years ago with a K2 on the 160m contest. There's a trend developing here. :^)

I need to become second nature with the IF shift; I should have used it more but am so used to traditional IF shift that I'm still not comfortable with it. It doesn't shrink the bandwidth like IF Shifts on older rigs, and I need more time to assimilate that. I think I will set up two macros in time for the Phone SS that will 1/ shift down and shrink bandwidth, or 2/ shift up and shrink, like I have on my K2.

I never used much of anything else. Never used RIT, NB, WIDTH, MON, RF GAIN, SUB, or my macros. I did use SPLIT once when VO1MP was listening up 1, the first time in 30 years of Sweepstakeses.

The K3 is the easiest rig I've ever had to set up for remote operation. I use N1MM. The CW keying was flawless and everything else worked pretty well. Maybe I just got lucky setting everything up?

Sorry for the long answer, Rich. To make a long answer longer, here are my "Toyota Corolla" settings on 20m: no ATT or PRE, BW=400, QSK on, NR 5-3, RF GAIN full on, SPOT=550 Hz, and RATE=10 Hz. Everything else was off.


 


----- Original Message ----
From: K3RWN <rwnewbould at comcast.net>
To: Elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Sent: Sun, November 8, 2009 7:53:27 PM
Subject: [Elecraft] K3 CW Contest Settings

As a new K3 owner I would be interested in the settings folks use for CW contesting.