With a 51' T as the 160M antenna, I used both my 20 year old TS-850 with 500 hz
filters and
my K3 with 500 hz filters this weekend in casual ARRL 160 operation on a very
crowded band.
Some observations:
1. K1DQV lives 1km from me. When he was on the air the 850 was completely
swamped. I had
to throw in 12-18 dB of attenuation to hear anything when Roger was
transmitting. With the K3
I could tell he was on but could hear fine within about 10 khz of his xmit
frequency.
2. With the 850, I could almost never find a "hole" where I could send ?/QRL
and not hear anyone
respond. With the K3 I could. Now, with my wimpy signal I was better off *not*
forcing myself
into narrow openings and fooling myself into thinking I could run at any decent
rate, but the
receiver performance was definitely different.
3. 160 was noisy on the vertical T in MD. To me, the 850 audio actually made it
easier to pull
weak signals thru the crashes (as long as K1DQV wasn't transmitting) than the
K3. I didn't see
any real difference in the performance of the noise blankers in either one.
I don't yet do any diversity reception on the K3, but that would have been
another plus there.
John K3TN
Re: Preferred Topband transceiver
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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