Despite being pretty successful using my P3 to visually locate the spot where a DX Station is listening in a split-mode pileup, with the number of people that just transmit blindly even when instructed not to, sometimes visual just doesn’t work. I’ve been assured by other K3-owning friends that the second receiver is the way to go. You listen to the DX station in one ear on the main, and tune the sub to find the station he is responding to, then set your transmitter to that frequency to “tailgate” on the next “QRZ?”.
With the announcement that Elecraft prices would be increasing, I decided now was a great time (rather than later) to pick up the Sub Receiver, a couple of filters, and the P3’s SVGA enhancement. All those goodies came in about a week ago.
I had been advised that a methodical approach to installing the sub receiver inside an existing K3, which involves a fair amount of mechanical disassemble, would take about 3 hours. In my case I was probably a tad past the half way point after 3.5 hours (including the time to install the modification to boost the capacity of the 12VDC Switched Power jack to 1 Amp — enough to run that P3/SVGA combo). I managed to complete the assembly over a couple of lunch breaks, bringing the total to 5.5 hours. I suspect I could do a second one in about half the time, and have a better feeling for what makes the K3 tick now as a happy unintended consequence of doing the install myself.
Elecraft Quality plus slow and careful paid off. When I powered the K3 up after work today, there was sound from the speaker, and no smoke from the rig. The setup process to enable the sub receiver and calibrate the second synthesizer went smoothly as did entering all the additional filter info. The only “glitch” was that you had to power the rig off then back on after enabling the sub receiver to truly enable the sub receiver.
Now to work NH8S
