ND2E's Blog

The K3 is up and running, logged several QSOs over the last few days.

I am using an older CRT display and find that the radio is showing sensitivity to the 85 hz refresh signal. I had to rearrange the station to keep the antenna coax away from the very loosely shielded display cable that appeared to be radiating. Other than that all seems well and the radio is performing very nicely.

The K3 appears to be less subject to nearby PSK signals than either the TS-2000 or FT-857 that I had used earlier. The AGC seems to be a bit smoother but I have it set to its slowest setting. I have not had to turn the AGC off like I found to be beneficial with my other radios.

Next projects will be antenna rework, hopefully before Field Day.

I finished assembling the K3 late last Saturday and sarted the calibration and set up on Sunday and Monday. I Made two QSOs Monday afternoon to check things out but have not had any reports on how the digital signal looks.

So far the rig is living up to expectations and is an upgrade from both of my two previous HF rigs. I really appreciate the ability to move the passband around a bit as well as using the DSP to limit the bandwidth. One of my previous rigs had the ability but it was not as easy as it is with the K3.

I am using a Silicon Beach 24-bit external soundcard with the rig and see that the noise floor is a bit lower than I had experienced with the other rigs using the same soundcard or using a SignalinkUSB. The ability to switch to a narrow (400 or 250Hz) and use HRD to automatically put the signal in the middle of the filter passband with just a couple mouse clicks makes life easy when things get congested or when there are really big signals swamping the radio AGC.

One of the things I really like is the K3_EZ program that allows me to measure and print the SWR of my antennas with just a push of a button. The KAT3 ATU is great, I have a 40M Hamstick dipole that I use for digital work and occasionally need for voice. My other radios could not match the high SWR at the top end of the 40M band. The KAT3 does a great job. Of course I probably see a 10-15 dB loss but at least I can radiate some sort of a signal.

The build is proceeding as quickly as I can set aside the time. Today I finished the physical build of the K3 and have started on an Elecraft W1 Watt/SWR meter for general use and to calibrate the K3. Once that is done I will do the K3 calibration and start building the Power Amp.

I had a few questions that should have been answered in the manual, they were answered quickly by the Elecraft staff. In addition, I have several comments on how to improve the already good manual and will forward them to Elecraft when I complete the rig.

This afternoon I started on the K3 build. Spent a several hours inventorying the parts before actually starting the build. So far I have almost 3 hours into the construction and things are going together quite well. Fit and finish are quite nice. The instruction manual is first rate. The only quibble I have is that part names are used in the manual but the parts have part numbers and in many instances don’t have part names.

The USB Serial device that has given me a problem is the IOGEAR USB to 2-Port Serial RS-232 Converter, Model GUC2322. I reinstalled it and reinstalled the driver on their web page.  Again I noted the major increase in the System Process CPU usage. I removed it and placed an old USB 1.1 Prolific adapter in and the CPU usage for the System task went to 7% on the peaks and stayed down at zero most of the time.

I will eventually contact IOGEAR and Moschip to find out why.  But for the moment the Dual Port device is not usable in my system.