[Elecraft] Icom 7300 is available

[dave]

The observation I would make on this is that the poor performing Icoms 
were good enough to capture all 3 of the top positions in the recent 
WRTC. IIRC there was one Elecraft and 5 Icoms used by the top 3 teams.

I don't want to read too much into that, op skills play heavily in the 
results. And luck plays a role as well. But nonetheless, even though 
the 'numbers' of the Icoms are not all that good, they appear to be 
'good enough'.

They do have too much TX noise. But then nearly all rigs have too much 
TX noise.

My view is that the top-of-the-line rigs are serious overkill for 
nearly all hams.

Even the lowly FT-857, which is no ones idea of a 'contest rig', did 
surprisingly well in the hands of two very good ops. This was back in 
the WRTC in 2010. Their pair of K3's were wiped out by lightning. They 
lost an hour of op time while swapping rigs but still finished about 
35th out of 50. At the end of that lost hour they were dead last, but 
then climbed back up the list. So I think the evidence indicates that 
even under the demanding condx of a contest a lot of rigs are good 
enough to be competitive. Guys should spend less on rigs and more on 
antennas. Or maybe spend that extra $$$ on beer and women . . .

73 de dave



On 3/2/16 11:09 AM, Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
>
> On 3/2/2016 11:49 AM, lstavenhagen wrote:
>> I don't doubt at all that Icom's high end rigs are good rigs with
>> good performance, but the K3 and K3S at the core of the Elecraft
>> investment still far outperform them for less money. For me anyway,
>> Icoms offer nothing comparable to the K line at the upper end of the
>> $ range, not even close.
>
> If you look at test data from both Sherwood and ARRL, I don't believe
> you can consider any of the Icom rigs (ProIII, 7600, 7700, 7800) to
> be "high performance" (I'm holding judgement until I see test data
> on the 7851).  In all cases, phase noise and 2 KHz IMDDR3 are barely
> adequate with 2 KHz IMDDR3 between 70 and 80 dB and phase noise in
> the 125 - 130 dBc/Hz range 10 KHz from carrier.
>
> Those numbers put Icom's top of the line rigs behind well known "High
> performance" rigs like the Flex-1500 and Yaesu FTdx3000!
>
> 73,
>
>    ... Joe, W4TV
>
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