W1MJ's Elecraft K3 Experience

I've been an amateur radio operator for 40 years (yikes!), and never had a really good radio. My present home station consists of an Icom IC-706MKIIG, a pretty good rig, but not high end. When the Elecraft K3 came out, and got such good reviews, I decided I would get one after the last of the children graduated college in 2011. I liked the idea of the no-solder kit, where I could take some pride in assembling it myself, but not have to deal with surface-mount soldering. But with one more daughter still in college, some strange and wonderful things happened over the summer of 2010.

First, Jon Pellant, W1JP, brought his K3 up from NYC for the WARA / CC-ARC Field Day. When Jon headed home, he inadvertently left the manual behind at the site. When I emailed him, he said not to bother sending it back, as he had the PDF file. So I kept it and read it voraciously like a can't-put-it-down novel.

Later in the summer, a UPS notice showed up on my door for a delivery from Elecraft. How strange! I called Elecraft to see if they had made a mistake. The woman who answered the phone asked me, "Did you open it?" I said no. She said, in a mysterious manner, "I suggest that you open it". I asked if she knew what it was. She said yes. I said, "You're not going to tell me, are you?" She said no.

When I got home, my wife Irina had picked up the box from UPS on her way home from work. I was mystified, but Irina, being much brighter than me, said that it must be from my best friend Bones (Rick Palm, K1CE). She guessed correctly that it was his way of saying thanks for all the support I had given him before and since the recent passing of his beloved wife, Joanne Palm, W1GUN. Bones and Joanne met while both employed at ARRL Headquarters in Newington, CT, and they later moved for Florida.

Then, within 2 days of the K3's arrival, I received snail mail from W1JP, saying that he wanted his K3 manual back after all, and to please send it back in the enclosed s.a.s.e. I felt like Jim Carey in "The Truman Show".

W1JP and his K3 at FD 2010

K1CE & W1MJ climbing Mt. Washington, NH, September 2010

Accessorizing

The New England ARRL Convention came shortly after the K3's arrival, and gave me the opportunity to get advice on options and accessories from Elecraft co-founder Eric Swartz, WA6HHQ. He asked how I planned to use the rig. When I told him that I was mostly interested in CW, and also wanted to use the rig on SSB on Field Day, he advised me to get the 400 Hz and 2.8 kHz 8-pole roofing filters. I also ordered the MH2 hand mike. Elecraft paid the shipping charge on orders placed at the convention.

Work Area

I took seriously Elecraft's suggestion of setting up an "ESD Safe" work space that would not cause static damage to the components during assembly.

Initially, based on an error on the Stanley web site, I bought a Desco cord that would not mate with the mat because both parts had the same gender. Stanley was nice about correcting the error, and I see that they've corrected their web page to show the correct matching cord. Even the correct cord was difficult to plug onto the mat, as I had to squish down the foam around the connector, but it worked out OK.

Inventory

As in my old Heathkit building days, I also took seriously the instruction to do a parts inventory prior to building the kit. Besides making sure everything is present, this also gave me familiarity with the parts. And as I counted the hardware, I sorted the screws and such into clear sandwich bags with labels that made the parts easy to find during assembly.

There were some apparent discrepancies between the inventory appendix in the K3 manual and the actual parts I received, but Elecraft resolved the issues fairly quickly through an exchange of emails. In the end, nothing was missing, and Elecraft has addressed at least some of the discrepancies in their latest "Assembly Manual Errata".

Assembly

Finally, with a proper work area and a complete inventory, I started building the kit. I found the instructions to be very clear, with plenty of accompanying photos - as good as the instructions provided by Heathkit when I built my HW-101 as a teenager. I did have a few questions during assembly, but as with my inventory questions, I received swift responses from Elecraft - even on Sunday evenings!

The hard part is finding the time to assembly the kit. I'm trying to get into the habit of getting through a couple of checkmarks in the assembly manual per day, but even that isn't always feasible. But I'll get there eventually.

The final step was installing the 100-watt final amplifier option (rear right with heat sink)

And finally, the day after Thanksgiving, the rig is complete and on the air. My first contact was with Bones, K1CE. Then I gave it a workout on CW during the CQ WW DX Contest and ARRL 160M contest. In this photo, I was using the CW text decoder to show my grandson Dima his name as I was sending it using my Begali paddle and the K3's internal keyer.

Interfacing

Interfacing the K3 with my computer for firmware updates, rig control, and CW was very easy. It only requires an off-the-shelf "9M-9F" serial cable. I used a shielded cable, Radio Shack 26-1402. The setup in N1MM Logger was easy - I used the same serial port lines for CW and PTT as I did for my IC706MKIIG, and set the K3 CONFIG:PTT-KEY to match. If I disable the PTT control in N1MM, I can send CW in QSK (full break-in) mode, and I'm trying to decide if I like this or not.

I haven't done audio interfacing for sound card digital modes yet, but it looks like it will only require simple cabling. The K3 has built-in RTTY and PSK31 functionality, so I still have to figure out if audio interfacing is even necessary. I'll update this section when I learn more about it.

How to Use the Gosh Darn Thing

Now I have to read the K3 Owner's Manual some more and learn how to make full use this advanced radio. I haven't even set it up yet for SSB operation, though the manual describes a test mode that lets you hear the effect of mike gain and compression adjustments without actually transmitting. I was never big on "bells and whistles", but now that I have a lot of them at my disposal, I think I might actually find some of them useful. I will update this page once I've learned more about using the radio's features.