[Elecraft] [Elecraft-K3] K3S to be discontinued

[Wayne Burdick]

You're right, Joe: you don't want to push predistortion to the max available power out on a given band. It may be a little less than 100 W to ensure headroom under all load conditions.

And these days, predistortion is done with DSP. The K4 has a lot more horsepower in this regard than the K3/K3S.

Wayne
N6KR


> On Nov 4, 2019, at 4:54 PM, Joe Subich, W4TV <lists at subich.com> wrote:
> 
> On 2019-11-04 7:34 PM, W2xj wrote:
>> One could always have a modular approach which is how other industries approach this.
> Sure, a modular approach would work well ... a 12V/60W PA or
> a 40V/200W PA that would plug into the same space.  Not exactly
> rocket science.
> 
> > BTW, predistortion   is common practice is a number of industries.
> 
> Yes, I'm very familiar with predistortion - it was common in analog
> UHF TV transmitters 30+ years ago and integral to broadcast HDTV
> today.  Still, proper setup was not something for an "appliance
> operator" and tracking changing operating conditions (e.g., fading
> batteries) takes a lot of computational horsepower.  On top of that,
> predistortion works best when the amplifier chain is not pushed for
> every last fraction of a watt of output - best results will always
> be obtained when the PA chain is reasonably clean to start with.
> 
> 73,
> 
>   ... Joe, W4TV