[Elecraft] In praise of the sub Rx & Diversity

[Gary Smith]

When I bought the k3 in 09 I went all out 
and bought most of the accessories to go 
with it. One of these was the sub Rx and a 
full matching set of crystals for it. As 
upgrades happened I did them all and 
wasn't using the Sub Rx in diversity so 
much but, the advantage of the Sub Rx was 
always there with flexibility I take for 
granted.

So I upgrade to the K3s and migrated the 
sub Rx to it as well. I just don't think 
of diversity much but that was one of the 
reasons I bought the Sub Rx in the first 
place. With the 3 dB loss going to 
Diversity, I just listened more with the 
main receiver and let it go from there.

So today I'm working a ve7 on 10M and the 
band is going out. I can hear him but it's 
at that marginal iffy point, I was missing 
characters in his CW. I have a HI-Z 
triangular & a circle 8 pair of Rx 
antennas. The Circle 8 rocks on the low 
bands, has a filter to cut out above 40M 
but the triangular has no such filter and 
I often hear better on it than on the the 
roof mounted tribander. So for fun, I used 
diversity and the triangular on the sub, 
160 sloper for the Tx antenna & Voilà, I 
heard him so much better, finished the Q 
and that reminded me of the real advantage 
of diversity and why it is an asset.

So now it's tonight, I see 3C0L is still 
on the air at around 3AM their time, on 
20M. They're heading home today and the 
low band antenna is packed up already. 
What troupers to still be in the game at 
this point. But I digress... So here they 
are, I don't have a good antenna for 20M, 
have to use the 160M antenna or tribander. 
RFI from the neighbors makes the tribander 
useless so I hear them on the sloper and 
can hear them on the Hi-Z Triangular a bit 
better but much QSB so remembering the 
success with the VE7 earlier I go 
Diversity & all of a sudden, solid Q5 
copy, no QSB and I snagged them on 20 CW.

Diversity really made the difference. I 
bought the K3s because it had such 
excellent specs, nothing else to me came 
close, save for 1-2 radios that in 09 were 
hot and cost more than a new car. And they 
weren't any better in practicality than 
the K3 was. I bought the Sub Rx for the 
diversity and now today, while the K3s is 
itself stellar in all the right ways, it 
is an a better product with the Sub Rx. 
I'm really honored to have such an 
incredibly capable radio.

Just sayin'

73,

Gary
KA1J