[Elecraft] [K3] Reconfiguring band boundaries

[Thomas Horsten]

I got a couple of emails off-list in response to my request for
locking down the transceiver for the ham bands only.

The gist of these mails was, that as licenced hams we have been
through the training and exams and should be able to stay within our
licence conditions, and we should (and generally can) be trusted with
equipment that is capable of operating outside the ham bands.

I just wanted to make it clear that I don't disagree with this at all,
and I was never suggesting that it's the job of the rig manufacturers
to lock down devices just to prevent us from doing something
wrong/illegal/stupid if we choose to do so.

I've also got other rigs capable of transmitting well outside the ham bands.

As everybody knows we can and do make mistakes from time to time. For
example see the "Operated K3 SSB in CW band - not sure why" or the
"Oops I did it again" threads.

In short there are many ways to make a mistake, especially when (like
me) you are experimenting with various computer controls etc., and
having the transmit ranges configurable at the rig firmware level,
would provide an extra line of defence - nothing more and nothing less
- if you choose to enable that option.

If I mistakenly transmit on the wrong frequency within the ham bands,
I may be causing a nuisance to others, but that's as far as it goes -
but if I transmit outside the ham bands I am (in my jurisdiction)
committing a crime and could (in the worst case) be prosecuted and/or
lose my licence. Now, I know it's quite unlikely that this would
happen when it was clearly a mistake, but still.

So that's the reason for my question in the first place. If this was
something I could easily do with a firmware/configuration tweak I
would have liked to enable it, just as an extra line of defence. If
it's harder than that, fine, I can live without it and it will just be
a nice thing to have if it one day gets implemented in the firmware.

73,
Thomas 2E0ETT