Have had my K3 and P3 since the day before Christmas and I've been on the air almost daily with them. Mostly using CW and RTTY. At first I was constrained to simple wire antennas (quarter wave inverted L on 160 and a 40/20 meter single feedpoint fan dipole).
On 160, 80, 40, 30 and 17 meters, if I could hear a DX station at least S5, as long as I wasn't fighting a monster pileup of KW stations, I could generally work that station. If the station was in the clear and had a decent RX, I could usually work that station if the signal was even down to S3. I usually found out later that those type stations were also using K3's. Some had big antenna arrays, almost all were running 600 watts or more. However, they were still able to copy me. The results on 20 weren't quite as good as I was generally having to fight the big pileups. I did get lucky, thanks to the sub-receiver to plan my attack when operating split. It did take some getting used to as I prefer speakers to headphones. Having the DX station in the left ear while tuning to find the last worked and a hole close by with the right ear can get to be hectic. My early years as a "morse intercept operator" in the military helped in that regard but I hadn't used the skill for many years and had to get used to the "multi-tasking" aspect of it again once I figured out how to set up the K3. That isn't really well spelled out in the book, and took some experimenting. It's obvious from listening to the pileups on rare DX stations that many people have not learned how to operate "split" properly. My wife was extremely nice to me and got me a new A3S tri-band yagi for my birthday and with it in the air, I've actually had a lot of fantastic contacts on 20, 15 and 10 meters lately as all three bands have been opening up a lot lately. It isn't really a substitute for an amplifier, but it sure helps. I like the challenge of operating with 100 watts or less, so probably won't ever manage to save enough for a KPA500 when it soon hits the market. I really like the added features that Wayne has come up with lately making QRQ mode a bit more versatile and the ability to turn the APF on and off with MACRO commands. Having the ability to set a single button MACRO to quickly shut off QRQ mode, enter SPLIT and set VFO B "up 2 KHz" has been a big help - especially on several of the recent DXpeditions. Having the P3 to visually determine where the calling stations are makes the sub-receiver very useful. Especially with the B VFO cursor being visible (I wish the sides of the U shaped curser were longer to extend above the noise to make it easier to find and position), one can find the last stations worked, figure out whether the DX station is tuning upward or downward in frequency for his next one and position yourself a half KHz or so ahead of the last one he worked. If you're quick enough you can get your call in immediately after he finishes with the last one. Quite often this will result in a "one call" QSO. Might be nice if one of the more prominent K3 owners who is also a DX'er would write up a tutorial to include in the K3's literature to help the newer users figure this out. Many are not on the reflector or will ignore my ramblings anyway. Jim - W0EB ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
