[Elecraft] (no subject)

[Don Wilhelm]

Mike,

The Elecraft gear is software defined radio, but the software is not 
open source and not available for modification by the user.

Software changes may be requested of the developers, and some may be 
implemented if the user audience that will use those added functions is 
sufficiently large.  So yes, the firmware is proprietary to Elecraft, 
and not open source.

The K3 and K3S are hybrid designs which have an analog front end with 
down-conversion to 15kHz where the DSP software is processed.

The KX3 and KX2 use a quadrature mixer which brings the IF directly to 
an IF that is then processed in DSP.

You will find that the Elecraft gear to be among the top performers for 
receive (see the Sherwood listings).  The K3, K3S, KX3, KX2 and the pure 
analog K2 are quite high on the Sherwood ratings.

If you are looking for superior receive characteristics, then Elecraft 
may be your answer.  If you are looking for open source firmware with 
the resultant "user defined" functions, then you might want to look at 
the HDSDR which will allow open source alterations - https://openhpsdr.org/.

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73,
Don W3FPR

On 5/11/2017 10:38 PM, Mike Parkes wrote:
> Hello Elecraft group,
> I don't own anything made by Elecraft yet however I have been shopping for
> an HF rig to get active again (I have been off the air for a number of
> years for personal reasons). I really like Elecraft's products, and I am
> intrigued by the 'software definable radio' possibilities in this new breed
> of amateur radio equipment design.
> 
> I have a question though, related to what can or can't be done with an
> Elecraft SDR transceiver*. Is the source "code" able to be modified by the
> End User?* Or is it proprietary in some way so that only those at Elecraft
> can touch the code? I have been monitoring this list for while now and have
> yet to read anything like, "hey check out this cool change I made on the
> Elecraft KX3 code! Before the radio only did this - now it does this!" and
> next thing you know there are some very cool user modified code being made
> available. Like, the ham being able to add their call into the code? (see this
> example
> <https://spacemodels.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/customized-display-kx3.jpg>
> )