[Elecraft] Are you satisfied with your K3?

[Bayard Coolidge]

Like many others here, I've been licensed for a long time (close to 45 years), and have had many decent
rigs, albeit not necessarily high-end multi-kilobuck ones. Most recently, I was using an Icom IC-746Pro.

Clearly, the K3 can run circles around the '746Pro in virtually all respects, and I knew that before I bought
my kit late this summer. But, there is one feature that is "missing" (solely in my opinion) - the capability to
control an external/remote tuner in the same sort of way that I could control my LDG IT-100 from the '746Pro.

My antenna configuration is a bit weird - I'm on a small south Florida home lot, with 24kV power lines running
parallel to both the back lot line and one (the east) side lot line, and the XYL wants to maintain "curb appeal".
I installed a 20m quarter wave vertical (~16.5 ft high) near the wooden fence on the west side and then ran
40ft of wire northward to a tree branch, and installed some counterpoise wires. Between January and June, I
used the IT-100 at the base of the vertical at the feed point, and controlled it from the 'Pro using the AH-4 protocol
over some 4 conductor wire. Band changes were virtually instantaneous, and I was able to work a surprising amount of DX.

With the K3, I'm having to tune the antenna system (antenna plus about 50 feet of RG8X) at the rig in the shack.
I'm a bit squeamish about this - it seems to be working OK, the internal tuner in the K3 is nice and fast, but I
still wonder how efficient it is compared to Pro/IT-100 configuration. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to
gather definitive data to support or refute my qualms, but my sense is that, on some frequencies, there's a really
nasty looking impedance presented at the back of the rig.

I realize that Wayne and the rest of the design crew had to make some engineering design decisions, but I'm thinking
it would be real interesting if they could concoct a solution entailing replacing the KAT3 with some sort of small
interface/controller, which would then "talk" to a remote version of the KAT3 tuner itself over a cable, in the
same vein as (but not necessarily using) the AH-4 hardware/signaling protocol. This way, I could hit the 'ATU TUNE'
button, which would drop the K3/100 to low power, have the tuner do its thing but at the antenna feed point,
and then return the rig to full power and ready to operate. Yes, I know that they have bigger fish to fry at this point!

Overall, though, I'm delighted with my K3/100 and am still learning about all of its features and how best to use them.


________________________________