I received my kit from Elecraft by UPS on Thursday, March 11 (took one week delivery which is normal for UPS-ground to AK). I waited until Monday to begin assembly so that an anti-static matt could be delivered. I finished on Thursday evening with approx. 11-hours of actual time spent. I took my time and read instructions fully before performing each step. Excellent instructions (and I used to be a tech writer for Hughes Aircraft so have some experience, here). A step up from Heath kits in my opinion!
I was very impressed how precisely the hardware alignment was made; no holes needed re-drilling or tweaking of panels to get things to fit. Even the front panel went together pretty nicely considering the multiple connectors. Problems? The aux Rx was dead (no audio) at first then I realized that I had not calibrated the second synth. I had a PL2 Error which cleared when the second synth. was calib. Pretty complicated configuration process, which was helped by the sw once I got the USB/RS-232 cable drivers installed (that was a battle for short time on the Dell laptop -Vista). Not clear start-up procedure: start sw, connect USB, power on radio (that last step allowed the sw to find the com-port assignment). I could not find the configuration where one enables/disables mic bias (using Heil HM-10 mic), but adjusting mic gain and compression I finally saw some RF output (TUNE button worked right off). I calibrated the Tx power to be a max of 16w out 80-15m, 8w on 10-6m. Using Bird-43 100H element probably not too accurate at low levels. I set mic=30, comp=15 and ALC peaks 5; good on air report on 80m net running only 12w! I have not set either Rx or Tx equalizers, yet. Speaker audio is a bit harsh sounding but I will use an old National Speaker, eventually. Headphones sounded good. My K3/10 came with the KXV3, KBPF3 and KRX3, 13, 2.8, and 400-Hz on the main board and 13, 2.8-KHz filters in the aux Rx. My main use will be on 144-eme and 1296-eme using transverters. I installed the KTCXO3-1 for frequency accuracy at microwaves. The dual Rx will permit using two 2m transverters for dual-polarity diversity reception with a sw program looking at a 13-KHz bandpass on USB (thus the two 13-KHz filters). It will take till summer to get this fully installed and functional. I am also using the K3 on 500-KHz (WD2XSH/45) to drive a surplus 100w NDB xmtr (non-directional aircraft beacon). The NDB was xtal controlled so I inserted drive at -6 dBm to move the unit to 495-510 KHz. The NDB is basically a linear amplifier with 46-dB gain. The -3 dBm K3 output at the XVT Tx output will easily drive the NDB. And, of course the K3 will be used on HF and 6m. I didn't chose the KPA-3 but instead am building a 300w amplifier kit that cost me about $150. It runs on 28-vdc using two MRF-422 xsistors. I am curious to try psk-31 on 14.070 with 12w (should be fine with my 3-element beam). CW memory scripts will be handy for running CW beacons on 500-KHz. I purchased an ARR P50VDG preamp (again with a savings over Elecraft model). It hasn't arrived so haven't tried 6m, yet. So, with two days of use ---- yeah! Especially liked tuning out QRM with the DSP filters. The 400-KHz filter is great on CW! 73, Ed - KL7UW, WD2XSH/45 ====================================== BP40IQ 500 KHz - 10-GHz www.kl7uw.com 500-KHz/CW, 144-MHz EME, 1296-MHz EME DUBUS Magazine USA Rep dubus...@hotmail.com ====================================== ______________________________________________________________ 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
