Topband: Preferred Topband transceiver

[jpescatore at aol.com]

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