Jim, you brought up a little known but very important point on the K3.
You said you listen 99.9% of the time with headphones.
I don't. Well I do in contests but only in contests.
Otherwise I'm always listening on an external loudspeaker.
Guess what?
The K3 audio distortion problem was IMPEDANCE DEPENDANT.
If you use headphones with 64 Ohms or more, you won't notice any distortion.
If you use a speaker with 4 Ohms or 8 Ohms, you notice a lot of distortion.
Therefore it is possible that many people found no problem with it while
many others had great trouble with it.
Case solved!
Source: same as always, Rob Sherwood. He found this problem.
The problem was improved (I thought about 5 or 6 years ago, I don't think it
was 8).
But it was only really fixed with the K3S.
However to be fair, after the fix 6 years ago, it was good enough for most
of us.
I liked my K3 a lot, but loved the Eagle a tiny bit more.
Love is an emotion, not a technology.
As Rob says, the NUMBER ONE reason to buy any radio is, you have to enjoy
using the radio.
This is an emotional reason, not a technical reason.
In the past, if there had been no Eagle, I would have been using a K3.
Now I would probably go with a TS-590SG.
Reason: My career as competitive contester is over.
I will never win another contest, and the Kenwood costs only half as much.
73 - Rick, DJ0IP
(Nr. Frankfurt, Germany)
-----Original Message-----
From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Jim Brown
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2015 7:24 PM
To: tentec@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Dirty Transmitters - Flex and Yaesu
On Thu,12/10/2015 8:34 AM, Darrell Bellerive VE7IU wrote:
> but I did not care for the audio, the complexity, or the ergonomics.
These issues are very personal, and depend a lot on what we're used to and
what we've experienced.
I'm retired from a career in pro audio, and am a Fellow of the Audio
Engineering Society. Except for casual monitoring while I'm doing other
stuff in the shack, I use headphones for 99.9% of my operation. My
headphones of choice are Sony MDR7506 and Yamaha CM500. Both provide
excellent communications quality RX audio. I don't use ham RX to listen to
broadcast audio -- I have other radios for that purpose.
As to user interface -- Elecraft has done a great job of learning what
controls most hams need on a daily basis and which can be on menus.
Everything that I've ever needed to adjust while operating is either a
button or a knob on the front panel, or can be assigned to either of two
"soft" buttons on the front panel. In 8 years, I've found only one function
I wanted to assign -- toggling the speaker on and off with my Yamaha CM500
plugged into the rear panel.
Indeed, the "complexity" is nothing more than giving the user more control
of how the radio works than do most other radios. This control is on menus,
AND menus are only needed when you want to change how the radio works. The
K3 and K3S work just fine with no adjustments to any of those menus to work
SSB or CW with a mic and paddle plugged into the front panel! Exception --
VOX Gain and Anti-VOX are on a top-level menu.
If you want to plug your CM500 (or other boom mic headset) into the rear
panel, you'll need to go to a menu to select rear panel mic and hit a button
(2 on the keypad) to turn on bias. Again, that's a one-time setting.
More complexity -- the K3 and K3S have TX modes optimized for digital modes
and for RTTY. You need to select the right method for the way you want to TX
these modes. These are, for most of us, one-time settings.
Less complexity -- both K3 and K3S have a Line Input to feed digital (or SSB
messages) from a computer, so you don't need adapters to the mic input.
But all the controls you need while operating are on the front panel -- IF
bandwidth and shift, Mic Gain, CW speed, Audio Compression, Power out, RF
gain, AF Gain, RIT/XIT, preamp on/off, Atten on/off, Ant1/Ant2 toggle, Tune
button, Ant Auto Tune, Mode, Band, Spot, Notch, NB, NR, are all on the front
panel. Want to go into Split Mode? Hit A>B twice in succession to copy A VFO
settings to B VFO, then push and hold A>B to go into split, then tune the B
VFO where you want to TX.
Hope this helps to correct some misconceptions.
73, Jim K9YC
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