Yep, that's right folks... KX3 serial number 160 was placed on the porch last evening without so much as a signature. Glad it came before Salmoncon 2012 later this summer as I was hoping to have it on hand for that outing and hopefully a SOTA activation during that event.
Opening the box we find an accessories tray with power cord, USB cable, CW paddles, allen wrenches and so forth. Elecraft does a nice job packing things up for shipment. In one of the envelopes was a "Packed with care by Stephanie" slip. :) Thanks Stephanie!
Next layer down, we find the microphone and the KX3 itself.
Carefully wrapped in a plastic bag as well as bubble wrap, surrounded by cardboard spacers was the KX3.
As they say on the EEVBlog, "Don't turn it on! Take it apart!" Here we can see the soul of the machine and a pile of AA cells later, we fired 'er up! I love how it comes up on all the QRP CW frequencies out-of-box.
Spent a little time just tinkering with the receiver last evening. This is one sweet ride of a CW rig. Today hooked up the paddles and spent some time adjusting them and practicing with the sidetone only. Hope to put it up on the air sometime this evening or this weekend at the latest.
When I arrived back from Finland, I had a little package waiting for me that contained this:
This is a 60 KHz WWVB time receiver module and the associated loop antenna. I plan to play around with this as an alternative time source to a GPS receiver for syncing beacon signals such as is needed with WSPR. This was obtained from the good folks at PV Electronics in the UK. If anyone has any experience with these modules, I would appreciate any insights as I am going at it totally cold.
