[Elecraft] Are you satisfied with your K3?

[Fred Jensen]

On 12/6/2012 7:53 PM, Wayne Burdick wrote:

> In my teens, freshly licensed, I had a Heath DX20 and a Hallicrafters
> S38D. The highlight of my first few months was working a guy 2000 miles
> away on a 60-W-lamp dummy load and 6' of leaky RG58. I later upgraded to
> a Heath HW-16 and had a blast.

About a dozen years ago, I inherited an SX-28 in very pristine shape 
from the estate of Woody, W6ANX.  I had one as a teen.  For quite 
awhile, it held down a counter in the shack against gravity outages.  I 
finally decided to enter an NAQP CW 40m using it and my old 40m ARC-5 
still in the basement [Heath HP-23 power supply].  Results were mixed.

I managed to get shocked off the straight key several times [forgot 
about cathode keying], I discovered that operating in a 21st century 
contest with a straight key, pencil, and paper was a lot less fun than I 
had imagined it would be, and, after perhaps two hours, and 3 dozen 
reports of key clicks, I decided I'd adequately punched my nostalgia 
card and reverted to my brand new K3.  I had a great time as a teenager 
with makeshift equipment, but of course I didn't know then what it would 
be like in 2010.  And apparently, aging my ARC-5 in the basement for 55 
years did not mellow the key clicks either.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013
- www.cqp.org