[TenTec] Working the Weak Ones

[Toby Pennington]

Rick wrote>>>> But what if I need a real weak one in the contest, and there is lots of
QRM....
The K3 beats about anything except the high end rigs. >>>>>>>>>>

I have recently bought an old Triton 4 with matching power supply and external VFO.  I have been doing A/B comparisons with the Icom 7700 in regards to hearing the weaker signals.  

I was totally blown away when I found out the Triton 4 could hear the weaker ones better.  The Triton is very quiet and you can hear a pin drop with it.  I have line noise,  and found out the Triton 4 noise blanker actually worked better with no distortion on the received signal.  I would put the Triton up against any rig as far as sensitivity and selectivity is concerned.  And speaking of cost,  just a few hundred bucks will set you up with this old rig. ( IF you can find one )  But,  In heavy QRM the K3 or the Omni 7 would be better as the Triton uses audio filtering.  No passband tuning either. 

Of course I know the newer rigs have lots of other features in their feature set especially all that comes with DSP.  But for a 35 year old rig I can say I am totally impressed!  

Rick,  I know this is of no help at all,,,,but is simply pointing out that you can't always go by specs.   I believe W8JI made this comment,  if you have a 2 tone IMD at 2khz of somewhere in the 80s,  this will be sufficient 95% of the time. 

Do you really need the specs which the K3 offers?  IF you do,  then that is the rig to buy.  It certainly offers many ways to load it up with varying prices as you have pointed out.  

Good Luck with your decision!    Toby  W4CAK