[Elecraft] K2 still a viable portable contest station?

[Jim Brown]

On 2/27/2019 5:33 AM, Ignacy wrote:
> K3 has an excellent speech processor with equalization. K2 has compressor
> and sounds OK but not dramatic with good microphone. IMHO KX3 processor is
> not too efficient and even below K2. But KX3 has an equalizer allowing any
> mic to sound good.

Yes. The K2 is compromised in several ways on SSB. First, the audio 
stage is low on gain, so a mic doesn't hit the peak limiter hard enough 
to do much. Second, the audio chain has a flat response, so low 
frequency components of the voice waste transmitter power. I did a mod 
for mine, which W3FPR knows about, that provides some low end rolloff 
and increases mic gain by about 6dB. That helped, but it's nowhere near 
what the K3 and KX3 are capable of.

Second, the narrow settings of the receive filter are produced by 
stagger-tuning of the multi-stage CW filter, and their combined response 
looks like a side view of the Rocky Mountains, so the accompanying phase 
shift distorts the RX audio enough that using the narrow settings often 
degrades speech intelligibility (that is, it makes voices HARDER to 
understand).

73, Jim K9YC