I've been running a K2 (Not /100, just 5 watts) for many years.
Operating what you build is great, but an even bigger plus is the
receiver. The front end beats almost anything available. I simply have
NO trouble printing relatively weak signals with very strong adjacent
(say closest tone 100 hz off) stations. Constantly variable filters, 4
per mode (non-DSP and a real pain to set), work very well. And even
with 5 watts you can work a lot. My RTTY QRP country count is about
260. Admittedly, it gets tougher at this part of the ss cycle, but even
this past November, as for every year since the K2 was built, it's
worked true cw DXCC (not just 100 dx mults) in every CQ WW CW contest.
And in the recent BARTG Sprint, WAC within an hour. With a laptop, you
can work RTTY from anywhere. But, it's a tough choice with its cost as
a kit being as much as many used rigs. And it's not so great at holding
a frequency while CQing!
Dave Barr
K2YG
>Bill Coleman, AA4LR wrote:
>For that price range, you can buy a NEW K2/100 with the external
>KAT100 tuner. Of course, you'd have to build it, but that would be
>half the fun.
>The downside of the K2/100 is you can only run about 25 watts on RTTY
>unless you substantially beef up the cooling of the finals with an
>external fan. Then you can run 50 watts. 100 watts on CW or SSB is no
>problem, but RTTY really punishes the finals.
>In the same price range, a favorite of contesters is the FT-1000MP
>(any version). Plain MP's often go for less than $1200. It's a great
>radio - just be sure you make the AGC and key click mods.
>Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL
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