[Elecraft] Field Day Operation

[Dave New, N8SBE]

Eric,

I promised Margaret some 'in action' K4D Field Day pictures.  I haven't 
forgotten, just been very busy in the aftermath of our 4A Field Day 
effort this year so far.

We've tried running 'cheap' GOTA stations over the previous few years, 
and except for a Kenwood TS-590S, everything else we've tried in the 
$1K-2K price category (or below) suffered badly from the other stations 
we were running at our FD site.  An ICOM IC-7300 last year and an 
IC-7610 (surprisingly) this year both suffered from frontend overload.

Considering the typical experience level of GOTA operators, trying to 
copy SSB when is it being interrupted continuously by the nearby CW 
station is very frustrating, and certainly not the kind of experience 
we'd like to give our GOTA station visitors.

This year, after trying the IC-7610, we pulled it and subbed in my 
K3s/P3 that I had been holding in reserve in case my K4D didn't hold up. 
  I'm happy to report my K4D ran with flying colors as our multi-band CW 
station (80M at night, 20M-10M during the day).

We also ran two other K3/P3 stations (with upgraded LOs, etc), one on 
40M CW, and the other on 40M SSB, and the last station ran multi-band 
SSB and FT8 digital and was a Yaesu FTdx101d (superhet architecture with 
'vctune' frontend).  I did notice a slight increase in my noise floor on 
my K4D when the Yaesu was running FT8 on the same band, but it really 
didn't effect our operation.  Considering that 20M CW was on about 
14.030 and FT8 on 14.074, we were relatively close to each other, but 
operated peacefully with out interference.

My experience with K3's running 2.8 kHz or narrower roofing filters, we 
could get within 10-20 kHz of another station before we noticed any 
interference, and that was mainly due to the Tx IMD of the other 
stations.  The K4D, without K4HD roof filters, seemed to tolerate 
getting within about 20 kHz before noticeable interference.  Ditto for 
the Yaesu with it's roofing filter and 'vctune' technology.

We topped 2000 contacts this year, with the CW stations making the 
majority of the contacts.  We have some very good CW operators in the 
club, and they are 'QSO machines' on the Elecraft radios.

73,
-- Dave, N8SBE

On 2023-06-26 10:59, Wayne Burdick wrote:
> Thanks for your comments, Eric.
> 
> Note that the K4 shares the same pedigree, and weighs only 2 pounds 
> more, for the same reasons.
> 
> 73,
> Wayne
> N6KR
> 2A SCV
> 
>