KM4VX Whilst I find your comments on the PROIII are correct in that it is an intuitive radio to use I am surprised at your level of enthusiasm.
Recently we had a field day in VK and a good friend of mine who owns a PROIII and has always liked it after he used both of mine in the shack many times which got him hooked and he sold his FT-990 to buy the PROIII, he again used my K3 for several hours and made the comment that he preferred the K3 over the PROIII because the quality of the K3 receiver was definately better. I have now got my K3 set up to the point whereby I rarely have to touch any of the menu options. When we tried to set up the PROIII receiver to produce good audio with DSP activated on 160 and 80M we found it very difficult to copy any station that was close to the noise floor. We tried turning the AGC OFF on both radios and rode the RF Gain and the results were strikingly different. The K3 had even better copy but the PROIII struggled and the copy was very tiring on the ears. (SSB was used) We were using a Heil Pro Set on the PROIII and Yamaha CM500 on the K3, and we both agreed that the external speaker on the K3 was pretty awful to both our ears...(Grin)... The noise on both the bands was releatively high at the time and where the K3 DSP was excellent, the PROIII was again struggling to make good copy. Reducing receive bandwidth on the radios again produced a strikingly different result. The K3 was able to work at 1.20 BW yet the PROIII was unintelligble for practical copy and was quite hard to listen too. We also tried an FT-847 which the owner was very much in love with and he too found it difficult to copy the signals that were easily copied on the K3. We all came to the conclusion that the K3 receiver was indeed superior as the independant labs have shown and although sometimes these may be marginal improvements to the human ear, they do nevertheless show that the K3 is a very good radio. Although no longer made, the PROIII was the final evolution in ICOM's fine tuning by box replacement, of a radio that had been in production for years and my humble opinion is that it took a long time for them to respond to issues with this model and your only option was to upgrade by total replacement which is not cost effective for most of us. Well as a result of the field day, Jeff, the proud owner of the FT-847 has sold the radio and awaiting the arrival of his new K3. Dale, still has the PROIII but is now making noises that he would like to upgrade to a K3 if the "Border Patrol" will allow him...(:-)) We all have different perceptions of what makes a good radio, we all have varying degrees of what "sounds" good, but to my way of thinking it comes down to what you hear, not what you are told that is the only way you can make a valued decision when it comes to purchasing a new radio. When I turn on the K3 I miss the plain old fashioned band buttons but I have learnt to get by without them, I don't miss the Bandscope on the PROIII but then again I never used it that much, I don't miss the PROIII, but, when I sent my K3 to Aptos to get some updates and mods done I was forced to use my "Poverty Pack" radio, a TS-480SAT, and I guess I bitched so much about it my friends told me to get over it...(:-))...now the TS-480SAT has been sold off and I think I will just get another K3 to keep the current child company and they can play together while I am not around...(Grin) Aside from all that I have said, I found my PROIII's ( I had 2 of them) gave me reliable performance and I had no service issues, my FTdx-9000D was a total disaster and I lost all faith in Yaesu as a result and I also sold off the FT-2000D. That was one radio that needed to be fiddled with on almost every band change to get it to sound good on receive audio. I am portable of course and this severely limits my choices in radios. Most of the modern day radios do not like battery power when the voltage starts to drop, yes there are devices around that help, but they can produce their own issues also. The K3 has done a great job for over 2 years now. It get's to travel around a bit and most folks would say it has a hard life in comparison to others that get to live in the same nice shack all year round. I would not disagree with your comments on the P3, I don't know if I would get any benefit from it either as I remember I did not seem to use, or miss, the display on the PROIII. I would be interested in a P3 IF it evolves into a Spec-An type display whereby it will display true audio IN/OUT with an option to record the waveform displayed and could be saved to a Laptop. I can't comment on the W2, or any other high end wattmeter as I have not used anything other than an external CN-501 series cross needle meter. I use an analyser when I want to check my antennas and rely on the K3 swr display for general use. I use a 4 el;ement tri-band yagi and a 40M double extended Zepp 99% of the time. I have used EZ_K3 to plot both antennas and set the memories in the ATU. YMMV 73's Gary K3 #679 On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 4:23 AM, KM4VX <ronce...@earthlink.net> wrote: > > I always enjoy the Reflector coments, educational and occasionally funny. I > own the K-2, K-3 and PRO 111. This site is great PR for Elecraft, but we > should remember that their expensive wattmeter is inaccurate to the extreme > although pretty, and the P3 (in my opinion anyway) appears to be pure > fluff > for a lot of bucks. While I like Elecraft, particularly the K-2, > irrespective of all the testing results you can find ad nauseum all over > the > Internet, I find the PRO 111 equal to the K-3 and a lot easier to master. > I > intend to keep both and will still use the K-2 more than the K-3 or PRO > 111, > primarily QRP on 40. I think which radio you prefer is just a matter of > personal choice and your level of frustration; the PRO 111 is basically > plug-and-play while both the K-2 and K-3 demand excessive fine tuning, > calibration, adjustments, and searching menu after menu for the simplest > of > tasks. These are trade-offs. Enjoy the hobby, but be careful what you wish > for; those Japanese radios earned their markets. 73. > -- > View this message in context: > http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/K3-Replaced-Your-Pro-III-tp4957548p4959337.html > Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.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 > -- Gary VK4FD - Motorhome Mobile http://www.qsl.net/vk4fd/ K3 #679 For everything else there's Mastercard!!! ______________________________________________________________ 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
