[Elecraft] K4 thoughts after 3 months of use.

[Kenneth Christiansen]

I ordered my K4 the first part of March 2022 and received it the middle 
of July 2022. I ordered it with the 100 watt amplifier and antenna tuner.

I have a great K3S with the matching panadapter, 100 watt amplifier and 
antenna tuner. I kept this radio and promoted it to my camper.

I also have a KX3, KXPA100 with tuner and PX3. This always worked well 
but was hard to set up and get all the cords in the right places.

I have a HY-GAIN HY-TOWER and a g5rv that is only 20 ft off the ground 
at home. For camping I use a 32 ft vertical mounted on the hitch of my 
16 ft Scamp fiberglass trailer. I have a 4 to 1 UnUn at the base of the 
32 ft vertical and operate against the metal frame of the camper as a 
counterpoise.

I have a S5 noise floor on the vertical at home and my first pleasant 
surprise was the much lower noise floor when camping. One place had a 
noise floor of S1 and the other places were S2 to S3. I think I get 
about the same transmit performance from the Hy-Tower at home and the 
camping vertical but I soon came to realize with the K3S that I was 
working many CW signals that were below the noise at home on the S 
Meter. I enjoyed the 4 camping trips this summer.

At home I did work on improving my operation. The better S meter on the 
K4 along with the built in panadapter worked well. I found if I hooked 
up my MFJ 974H to the K4 antenna 2 and the G5RV that I can hear stations 
that I can not hear on the K4 antenna 1 which is the HY-TOWER. This 
seems to be true on all bands from 160 to 20 meters, I am having nice CW 
contacts that I would have missed before using only the vertical.

The K4 has a better AF filter than the K3 and it lets me copy CW 
stations with difficulty that do not even move the S meter. I am now 
working a lot more stations from home then I ever could before.

My only SSB contacts are on the Sunday morning 160 meter net and the SSB 
is perfect both transmit and receive and I am impressed by the contacts 
I make both transmit and receive.

The K4 sure works well with the KAT500 and the KPA500. The K4 remembers 
the tune level for the KAT500, barefoot power of the K4 and the proper 
drive level for each band for the KPA500. It is just a pleasure to use.

I find the mouse is nice to use on the K4.

I feel that having the K3S for camping and the K4 for at home is just 
what I always wanted in my 56 years as a ham. I have always like to CW 
rag chew all these years and with the exception of the ARRL field day as 
5 watt battery I avoid any contests and 30 second contacts that are so 
common. I can see that the K4 would be perfect for those contacts as the 
fast CW sounds so good and the digital seems to work well even though I 
do not bother to make any of the FT8 type of contacts.

The only thing I can see that would make the K4 better would be if I 
could more easily learn how to use features that are there and I don't 
even know they are there. I am not having any luck searching the 
internet for help. The filters seem to work just as well as the K3S CW 
filters and of course they are much better than the Drake 2B, Heathkit 
SB102, TenTec, and Ic746 rigs I have used over the years. The K4 appears 
to be the most frequency stable of any rig I have owned.

I hope my observations will help anyone that is thinking of a K4 and 
what they should consider if they have a K3S.

Ken   W0CZ