I had a QSK contact last night at 40 wpm with my F5K and I didn't notice any
problems. Worked as well as my Orion or my FT-1000 on QSK.
I don't see the K3 as anything but a transition radio between the old
technology of half duplex transceivers and the future. It has some SDR
character to it, but it basically is as fixed in stone as a KWM 2. You can
change it at the margins, add a little box her or a filter there but it will be
the same radio in 30 years it is today.
The flex radio is not that radio. It started its life as a visual basic
program, has progress to what we have today and is on the verge of becoming
platform independent. It is truly a work in progress. Its operation can be
changed radically in form and function. Its potential is not even scratched
yet.
Bill pretty well summed it up, the K-3 is a knob radio that can be kludged up
to bridge itself a little ways into the future. Its what I call one of the
transition radios along with the Ten Tec radios. In my book it belongs on the
trash heap of antiquity because its design philosophy is out of last century.
Its interesting that to bridge itself to this century the K-3 uses the open
source PSDR software
The F5K has a closed firmware because in order to become type accepted the FCC
required that. N8VB will come up against the same problem when he tries to get
his radio type accepted. Without meeting that firmware condition there would
be no F5K.
There are several branches of the code written by individuals. As people's
ideas come to fruition they are incorporated into the main trunk, improving the
experience for all users. Basically you pays your money and gets what you
gets. I like what I got.
73 W9OY
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