[Elecraft] P3 Questions

[Fred Jensen]

You will get a lot of replies Steve, they will likely all be positive, 
the P3 is a really great addition to any station.

I bought mine as just a toy ... my wife does needlepoint which is about 
as expensive as ham radio, we have an "equal hobby allowance" policy, 
and the radio balance was climbing.  However it has totally changed the 
way I operate.  I watch it now instead of the radio.

Not sure what you mean by "identify it," but I can see the signals and 
pick out the RTTY in a RTTY contest, CW, PSK, and JT65 just from the 
display.  PACTOR signals are also obvious although I'm not a PACTOR-ite. 
  It won't give you the call sign however. :-))  [You can also discover 
that the 5, 10, and 15 MHz WWV signals are somewhat dirtier than you 
would expect from NIST]

Yes, you can put a marker [there are two] on a signal, punch the knob, 
and your K3 will QSY to that frequency.

The display runs rings around the "bandscopes" on other radios.  I have 
no color vision and the color waterfall wasn't working real well for me, 
so Alan added a monochrome waterfall option in the next FW update, maybe 
just for me. :-)

I have yet to find a use for all 8 of the programmable function keys. 
DX'ing is amazing!  I see the DX and I see the pileup up a bit [well, 
not everyone, Up-Cops show up on the DX frequency].  Pileup looks like 
wide-band noise.  DX calls someone, pile dies off, and one signal is 
there [well, OK, several answer so sometimes I guess wrong], move VFO B 
to put the TX cursor on that station and at the "TU", call.  Works about 
75% of the time.  Also very useful when I'm NCS in the traffic net, I 
don't send stations "up or down 3" and put them on top of someone.

I run in Fixed Tune mode [screen displays a segment of the band and my 
frequency moves across it until I hit the edge of the segment].  There 
is also a Tracking mode where you're always in the center and the band 
moves past you.  Span is adjustable from 4 KHz to 200 KHz and you can 
assign specific spans to the function keys.  With the P3 Utility you can 
save screen shots to your computer.

I wouldn't be without mine.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2014 Cal QSO Party 4-5 Oct 2014
- www.cqp.org

On 6/20/2014 2:20 PM, Steve, K4FJ via Elecraft wrote:

> I am interested in some suggested reading which covers the
> capabilities and how those capabilities would help me in contesting
> and dxing.  For example, can I see a signal blip, identify it, move
> my K3 to it, etc.  Many more questions but I am sure someone has
> already documented the advantages.