Hi All,

Well, I finally got the opportunity today to check out an Elecraft K3.  All
in all, I liked the radio very much.  I was particularly impressed with the
quietness of the receiver and the fact that even at very narrow CW
bandwidths of less than 200 Hz, there was no ringing in the filter and CW
characters were still very readable.  I also like the feel of the tuning
knob and the existence of separate RF and AF gain controls for the main and
second receivers respectively.

Things that did not impress me as much were the DSP noise reduction and the
high and low cut selections.  The other thing that really bothered me was
when you would tune across the band and come upon a sideband signal, it
would first jump out of the speaker at you but when you settled on it, it
didn't seem to be near as strong.  I don't know if this is a product of how
this particular ham set up his AGC or what but I didn't much care for it.
The other major thing that bothered me is the amount of menu that has to be
worked through with sighted assistance.  With the options I would like to
have on this radio, it would be right at $3,000 or a little more and the
fact that Elecraft still hasn't come up with speech output or some sort of
real good system for setting menus, determining frequency and the like
really bothers me when I am looking at that amount of money.

I guess I would like to throw the question out to the list and particularly
those K3 users on it.  Do you know if Elecraft is coming up with something
for accessibility?  I really don't want to have to use my computer to
operate the radio and right now that seems like the only option one might
have.  Is there anything out there right now or contemplated, if anyone
knows< that would be superior to my 480 and come close to it's level of
accessibility, other than the Kenwood TS-2000?  I find myself really
frustrated that the K3 is still so inaccessible.  Is there something I am
missing about its operation that some of you have experienced that would
make it easier to run?

Thanks for reading my ramblings and I look forward possibly to some
discussion of these items.  Very 73 and good night.

Kevin :)
Amateur Radio:  K7RX