[Elecraft] New tuning knob for the KX2

[Don Wilhelm]

I had "ballistic" tuning on the FT-847 that I had and hated it.  Maybe I 
did not develop the right touch, but I would find when trying to tune 
quickly up or down a few kHz, I would end up going a MHz or more and 
have to struggle to get back where I wanted to be.

I use the bandswitching provided by the K3 Quick Memories, and have not 
touched the BAND+/BAND- buttons in years.  Read the manual to see how to 
do it.

As far as band-stacking memories, save the current band/freq/etc. in one 
of the M1-M4 buttons and you can easily come back to that frequency (as 
long as you don't leave that band).  I have the M1-M3 memories for each 
band set to take me to the center of my CW operating band (M1), Data 
mode (M2) and SSB (M3) leaving M4 for storing the current VFOs for a 
quick come back to the prior frequency.  It works well for me.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 1/8/2019 1:48 PM, Dave New, N8SBE wrote:
> I"ve always wished for a 'ballistic' interface, i.e. the faster you turn
> the VFO knob the larger the frequency change per turn.  On the other
> hand, I've suffered poor implementations of that feature (uBitX,
> anyone?), so it would need to be done carefully, if at all.  ICOM seems
> to have managed to come up with what I feel is a good implementation.  I
> used it for years on my old IC-735 (that I sold to partially fund my
> upgrade to a K3), and now on my IC-7000 that I still use mobile.  One of
> the things I immediately missed on the K3 was lack of a ballistic VFO
> interface, and lack of band-stacking registers.
> 
> I guess that Elecraft has had some edict(?) that they don't like
> ballistic VFO interfaces, so I guess we will all have to live with a
> fixed tuning rate.  Maybe there is a patent thicket that prevents
> implementing some of the more popular features on competitive radios?
> 
> Have said all that, I really like using the RIT knob to move large
> chunks of frequency quickly.  For me it's a lot easier than pushing the
> rate button to shift the tuning rate on the VFO back and forth.  And I
> became recently aware that there is a solution for the band-stacking
> registers on the K3/K3s, using a special mode for the keypad memory
> register recall.  I haven't tried it yet, but it is now on my to-do
> list.
>