[Elecraft] KX3 in the ARRL International DX contest

[Jim Sheldon]

Gave the KX3 a workout in the ARRL International DX contest this past weekend.  I hooked it up to the KPA500 and with the KX3 set to 5 watts out, I got between 130 and 138 watts out of the KPA500 which, naturally varied between bands with 130 out on 10 and just shy of 140 on 160.

Bands were in pretty good condition and propagation from Kansas to most of the rest of the world turned out to be almost great.  The money bands turned out to be 15 and 10 meters, but got a goodly number of contacts on 20 and 40 as well.  I did make a few on 80 and 160 to boot.  Total # of contacts 444, total QSO points 1332, multipliers 211 for a total claimed score of 285,052 points.  Total operating time over the contest was 14 hours out of the 48 total.  Entry was in the Single Op, Unassisted, Low Power category.  

My friend and neighbor that runs an Alpha 9500 amp and used to overload the front end of any rig I had before the K3 was absent from this contest for some reason so I didn't get to run the KX3 under really extreme conditions.  It never exhibited a selectivity or overload problem that I noticed.  I operated in "search and pounce" mode most of the time, doing a CQ run only on 10 meters during a time when it was just marginally open on Saturday afternoon.  Even running S & P I got my QSO rate up over 65/hour for several short periods on both 15 and 10 meters and the last few minutes of the contest on 40.

I had the iPad and iSDR running for the "panadapter" and it was really nice to be able to view the weak stations in reference to the "big guns" and with the roughly 150 watts out of the KX3/KPA500 combination, if the station was over S5, I had no trouble working them.  Amazing how much better the op's ears get in a contest, even with good propagation.  As I was tuning up the band, I watched the panadapter rather than the radio and could easily see if I passed over a station that wasn't transmitting when I rolled over their frequency if I didn't tune too fast.  Really helps when working S & P.  The iPad/iSDR combo is nowhere near as good as the P3, but since the P3 doesn't work with the KX3, it had to do.  I've gotten so used to the K3/P3 combination in a contest (or even general operating for that matter) that if my P3 died for any reason, I'd stay out of a contest until I got it fixed, it's that valuable to me!

40 opened early, or maybe it had been open all along and the EU stations just moved there for the last hour of the contest, I don't know.  Regardless, I switched to 40 during the last 45 minutes I operated (shut down about 5:45 p.m. local - 23:45 UTC), started right at the bottom of the band and worked every EU station I heard calling CQ.  Funny, the US "big gun" stations were all calling CQ and getting nothing.  I got there first and grabbed 'em while things were quiet and I didn't have to try and bust many pileups (which didn't seem to be much of a problem either) so during that last 45 minutes, I picked up 40 of the 46 stations worked on 40.

Managed 10 on 80 and 7 on 160.  Worked on all 6 bands were KH7X and HK1NA.

Logging was with N3FJP's latest ARRLDX program (version 3.0) and I used a Griffin PowerMate set next to the keyboard to control the KX3's frequency, sharing the com port via a commercial port sharing program.  

Overall, the KX3 performed very well, it's RX sensitivity is outstanding, the NR isn't perfect, but it did help some, especially on 80 and 160.  It wasn't really needed on the other bands as signals were so far above any noise for the most part that it was easy to work them.

Jim - W0EB