[Elecraft] My personal KX3 wish list

[Marcus Busch [DL1EKC]]

Hello everybody,

having bought my KX3/PX3/KXPA100 combo just one year ago, I'd like to come up with 
some ideas.

After operating my K2/KPA100/KAT100 for years (and it's still great!) and also 
operating K3s frequently for contest operation the KX3 quickly became my favourite 
TRX, at home, on portable contest activities as well as stand-alone on battery power 
for true portable operation. The receiver is absolutely top performing and shows the 
power of true DSP designs. Besides implementing great algorithms the Elecrafters know 
the practical needs of the user community. E.g. receiving crisper clear CW with 50 Hz 
bandwidth, dual watch or the RTTY with CW input are just unbelievable! Thanks for 
making this rig happen.

Having used my KX3 for about a year some wishes or ideas arose, which I'd like to 
present to the community. I am aware that not everything can be implemented in the 
existing radio. But maybe some of my "wishes" can be taken into consideration in 
future designs.

- pushbutton switches

Beginning with the K3 Elecraft turned over to rubber pushbuttons. I know these are 
much easier and cheaper to produce in an automated (SMT) parts placement process, but 
I still are not happy with them. The behaviour of these buttons varies rather large 
from button to button. At my KX3 some buttons provide intermittend contact closure 
resulting in undesired action. E.g. holding BAND+/RCL sometimes results in a number 
of super-fast band changes instead of recalling a memory. Other buttons work 
perfectly. Other KX3 or K3 have this issue on other pushbuttons. With the real 
switches of the K2 I never had this type of issue.

Maybe a future firmware release could mask very fast contact closures as a continues 
hold. I guess no user who intentionally wants to press a button several times would 
do this with a rate of more than 1-2 presses/second.

And maybe on a future rig Elecraft could think about going back to real switches?

- recalling memories

The KX3 features a vast amount of 100 general purpose memory. That's great. However, 
while dialling through the memories the receiver jumps to every frequency on display. 
I tend to sort memories by usage (e.g. beacon freqs) rather than by band. So a lot of 
time consuming band changes happen. This makes it practically impossible to quickly 
dial through the 100 memories.

I'd like to speed dial the memories without tuning the receiver until I specifically 
select one memory. If other users prefer the current implementation maybe a one 
second tuning delay would allow speed dialling the memories while still allowing to 
temporarily listen to memories.

- switching speaker / headphones

At home I operate my KX3 together with the PX3. While in QSO I use to wear 
headphones. At other times I listen using the built-in speaker. As the headphone 
connector ends up between the KX3 and PX3 it would be nice to activate the speaker 
without removing the headphone connector. In some operating conditions parallel 
operation of phones and speaker would come in handy as well.

This is not an important thing, but maybe this is possible under firmware control?

- CW autodetect

With my K2 I really liked the CW autodetect feature for parallel operation of 
computer keying (contest) and manual paddle keying. This K2 feature is absolutely 
great, allowing for very easy wiring and enhanced functionality, e.g. different 
speeds on computer and manually keyed characters.

I really really miss this one. Maybe there is some code memory left for this?

- Tilt stands

The tilt stands of the KX3 are designed to tilt the KX3 while still allowing to 
operate the KX paddle. However, most of the time I use the KX3 on a table and for 
this it would be handy to tilt the KX3 front to a higher angle for improved access 
and readability. I use a 15 cm high strip of wood which gives a nice viewing angle 
while still providing enough clearance between the lower KX3 edge and the tabletop.

Maybe Elecraft could provide longer tilt stands as an option?

- CW weighting

While I usually operate CW with a nominal weighting of 1, it sometimes would be nice 
to slightly reduce it to 0.90, especially for higher speeds in contest mode.

Could the firmware allow weighting down to 0.90 ?

- RX antenna

I really miss the receive antenna connection of the K2 or K3. I know this does not 
easily fit in the portable KX3 enclosure. And on a true portable operation there is 
usually no need for a receive antenna connector. 

But as the KX3 is performing that great, I meanwhile use it for all kind of 
operation. From the practical point of view a receive antenna socket in the KXPA100 
enclosure would suffice. While this is the wrong place from a technical point of 
view, it maybe could be "simulated" under strict firmware control? That's something 
for the KX4 or a KXPA100 rev 2 :-)

- WSPR

And finally, my extra dream function: A built-in WSPR beacon! Yeaah, it would be just 
too great to hike to some nice place and operate a WSPR beacon for some time just out 
of the KX3. I'm talking about transmit only.

However, WSPR decoding could be something for the PX3? :-) Just kidding.


Thanks again to all Elecrafters for their work. I hopefully haven't been wasting too 
much bandwidth here.

A happy and prosperous new year 2016 to everyone with great times at the radio.

VY 73

Marcus, DL1EKC