There's a niche in the ham radio market that once was filled by the Yaesu FT-736. Even though it's semi-obsolete technologically, mediocre in receive quality, and known to have a number of maintenance issues, the '736 still is going on eBay for $700 to $1,000, depending on which modules it has installed.
So my "ideal" for a new K-line would be a K3-sized "box" that would essentially be a motherboard providing a 50 mHz transceiver and IF strip, with daughter board slots for a number of transverter boards, starting at 2 meters and going all the way to light....well, at least to 1296. I'll call this the K4 for convenience. Alternatively, one could design a single box that would contain multiple transverters, which would plug into the K3 transverter input. This would no doubt be less costly, since it would not need to replicate the K3 transceiver circuitry to provide 50 mHz IF strip and the 6 meter transceiver. Preamps would be built into the new K4 or K-Line daughter boards, rather than attaching to the BNC plugs on the K3. This product might be called the XV-ALL. Either product/rig would be great for VHF-UHF contesting, moon-bounce (I think the original market target for the '736) and other weak signal V/UHF work. Frequency switching should be provided on each board so that the entire available band (e.g. 420-450 Mhz) would be available even with an IF strip of only 4 mhz wide. And, ideally, some way to allow 70 cm repeater work even with the standard 5 mhz repeater offset on that band. The "footprint" for the main circuit board of XV series transverters is about 50 square inches; a daughter board running front to back and standing edge-on a K3-sized motherboard would have about 25 square inches, so you might need two boards for each band module, or perhaps engineered from scratch it could be shrunk to fit. It should be relatively easy to fit four daughter boards into a fully separate "k-4" and perhaps 6 into an XV-ALL. The latter would give a weak signal VHF enthusiast access to 2M, 1.25m,70 cm, 33 cm, 23 cm, 13 cm, and maybe one or two more if you picked up 2M with a KXV2 in your K3. We'd love to see separate amps in the 100 to 300 watt range for each band, as well....since this is all wish-list stuff anyway. Meanwhile, thanks to the folks at Elecraft for building and supporting great radios! Lew Lew Phelps N6LEW Pasadena, CA DM04wd Elecraft K3-10 Yaesu FT-7800 l...@n6lew.us www.ntlew.us On Aug 21, 2013, at 5:14 AM, Ray Coles <raycole...@gmail.com> wrote: > If the Elecraft R&D team is looking for inspiration on future products then > my wish list would include a KX3 sized radio covering the V/UHF bands from > 6m through 70cm (at least). > > Ray M0XDL > > > > Ray Coles, C.Eng. M0XDL > > 10 Littlemoor Road, > > Weymouth DT3 6AA > > Tel: +44 (0) 1305 833699 > > Mob: 07831 516517 > > ______________________________________________________________ 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
