[Elecraft] KX3 Shipment notification

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Fred, that may have been a major consideration for commercial/military use
or for Hams who bought only factory-built gear, but for "homebrewers" that
was not necessarily true. A popular CW design for "Field Day" from the
1930's used two tubes for both receiving and transmitting 

I built a 2-meter AM transceiver in the early 50's using a 6J6 transmitting
oscillator/super-regen receiver and a 6V6 modulator/receiver audio amp. 

On HF, I copied SSB very well using both my regenerative receiver and on my
National HRO-5 receiver. I worked SSB stations running AM, when AM and SSB
were a harmonious mix on the "phone" bands, using my Viking Ranger. Simply
turned off the receiver BFO, flipped on the Ranger's VFO and adjusted the
VFO frequency for clear SSB copy. That put me "dead on" the other station's
frequency. 

Frankly, I'd prefer separate receiver and transmitters today, but I'm not a
contester intent on shaving a few milliseconds off of a brief QSO to run up
a high score. SPLIT mode in the Elecraft rigs lets me emulate separate TX/RX
quite well. 

73, Ron AC7AC


-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Fred Jensen
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2012 7:17 PM
To: Elecraft Reflector
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] KX3 Shipment notification

On 7/18/2012 6:48 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
> Sure, but the "transceiver" goes way back into the 1930's, long before 
> Art Collins.

Yep, and there was also the KWM-1.  None of these truly became popular in
the sense of "all over the place," and none of them hastened the transition
to SSB like the KWM-2 did.  Tuning SSB on a receiver was hard, and then
getting your transmit freq zero beat was daunting at first, and still hard
even as SSB caught on.

The KWM-2A [same rig with a second crystal deck], became the HF workhorse of
the US military [and I know several others too] in the 60's/70's.
Unbelievably sturdy and survivable, we pulled 42 of them out the back of low
flying C-130's that snagged our LAPES cable, and 42 of them worked and JJY
was exactly where it should be.

Our mission rules called for us to turn each pair [2 per mission], along
with the rest of the gear, to slag puddles with thermite before we were
recovered.  Team of 25, 3 hams, really really hard. :-((

It wasn't the first transceiver, or the only, but it, and the S-line which
would also transceive, probably changed ham radio as much as the transition
from spark to CW.  Now, we take it for granted, we have "radios" and they go
both ways.  I always meant to write to Art and tell him how sturdy his
transceiver was.  Alas, never had time while there, and by the time I came
home, I was marrying Andrea, there followed the usual kids, and I never got
around to it.  Then, he died.

73,

Fred K6DGW