[Elecraft] Life is good

[Kenneth A. Christiansen]

The new Synchronous AM Receive just capped all the improvements I have 
been able to make to 160 meters this year. I use my Hy-Gain Hy-Tower 
with a MFJ-927 remote tuner and a home made load coil to transmit. I am 
able to receive on my 80 meter dipole with the separate receiver input 
of the K3 to pick up less noise. The K3 noise blanker and variable 
digital IF filters all have made reception much better than my IC-746. I 
work a 160 AM net on Sunday mornings and always heard a sort of chirpy 
tone on the more distant stations. My supply is the Astron 35M and it is 
clean. The Synchronous AM USB option gets rid of all the chirpy tone. 
Thank you Elecraft.

I had one other good thing happen this week and will pass it along. My 2 
year old laptop computer quit and I bought a new Toshiba L505-S5590 
laptop with Windows 7. The driver for the KUSB from the elecraft site 
for Vista works just fine for Windows 7. I have not been able to detect 
any RF interference on any band I have tried so far from the Toshiba to 
the K3. The old lap top caused more interference when the KUSB and MixW 
were in use but I can't tell in any way on the K3 when I plug in the 
KUSB or run MixW. I even turned the AGC to manual and measured the DBV 
using the K3s built in audio tool and I don't detect any change from 
everything on the computer off to everything on. That is a real improvement.

I have no connection with the computer industry or Toshiba but  at least 
in my case the new computer and synchronous AM receive are both making 
my hobby much more fun.

I still need to know how to set up MixW to log the sending part of Sweep 
Stakes. Nothing I have tried has worked for the transmit part of the log 
although it does a perfect job of sending the data by keying the 
transmitter.

73
Ken W0CZ
w0cz at i29.net