[Elecraft] A Rob Sherwood's talk in Dayton

[Wayne Burdick]

Keith (K5ENS) wrote:

> I'm not sure what is to gain by holding back
> improvements.  As a early K3 owner I would love to see a better K3 offered. 
> I would have a choice to keep my early K3 or replace it with a improved
> unit.  Radios evolve all the time.


Hi Keith,

It's highly desirable that changes be retrofittable since we have some 7,500 K3s in the field. But there are different levels of "mod". 

The mod we made to the RF choke (to reduce receive AF IMD) was simple, involving a component change. Let's call that "level 1". Nearly all of the K3's mods over the years have been of this type.

We could completely redesign the AF stage if it were warranted, requiring replacement of the DSP board. Some customers might be willing to pay for such an upgrade, and we wouldn't . That would be "level 2".

Now suppose we came up with something truly revolutionary, like a switch from an LCD to and OLED display. That would require replacement of the entire front panel module, and we might change the model number of the radio--a "level 3" change. (We are *not* going to do that, by the way :) 

Any of the above changes are retrofittable, and I can assure you that we're not holding anything back. The K3 was designed in a modular fashion so it can adapt to new requirements.

73,
Wayne
N6KR