Mark Conrad wrote:
In . com, dave
wrote:

You'll notice the K3 is the #1 transceiver in every class (depending on
configuration). While it costs twice what the Yaesu does, it can grow
with you. It is made in USA and is the best radio ever made.

WOW !!! - Thanks, that is one serious rig from elecraft.com

Downloaded their pdf file and drooled over the features and spec's.

Egad, everything seemed so simple, now I have to decide what I
_really_ want in a rig.


You know what this means, I will need to park my carcass in the
parking lot of the nearest Walmart, hold up my cardboard sign
begging for money for Ham Radio gear.

I do free volunteer work for the local hospitals here in N. California,
trying to beat them into submission to adopt faster/better ways of
processing their mountains of paperwork.

Presently, most of them still use chisels and clay tablets
to document their medical procedures.

Only about 10% of USA hospitals take advantage of faster
speech recognition processing of data. (SR for brevity)

As a half-vast user of SR myself, I am used to stomping out
medical data on my Macs and PCs by voice, commonly dictating
complex 600 word medical reports with zero text errors
in four minutes time, wrestling phrases such as:

"perioperative transesophageal echocardiography"


Have to admit though, sometimes my tongue gets wrapped around
my eye-teeth so I can't see what I am saying.


Back on topic -
********

Seems the Elecraft K3/100 HF Transceiver would be ideal for
expediting emergency medical data in case of a national
catastrophe - - - one problem might be that FCC reg's do not
allow encryption of sensitive medical data, if I recall correctly.

I expect in a national emergency that FCC edict would
be quickly waived, allowing common sense to prevail.

Mark

This may be my last solar max (at least without drooling ;-) I figured
my heirs want their dad to have the very best.

In article , dave
wrote:

Seems the Elecraft K3/100 HF Transceiver would be ideal for
expediting emergency medical data in case of a national
catastrophe - - - one problem might be that FCC reg's do not
allow encryption of sensitive medical data, if I recall correctly.

I expect in a national emergency that FCC edict would
be quickly waived, allowing common sense to prevail.

Mark

This may be my last solar max (at least without drooling ;-)
I figured my heirs want their dad to have the very best.

Go for it !

As soon as win the lottery, I am going to do the same.

Mark

On Mar 19, 2:42*am, Mark Conrad wrote:
*Opinions regarding *Yaesu FT-817ND * transceiver?

Seems like a great little rig, blasts out a whooping 2 watts
of RF power on batteries, do not know if I can handle
that much power, if I decide to apply for another license.

I haven't got a '817... I instead opted for its 100W cousin, the
'897D. The catch with all of these more modern "all-band" radios
though, is the high level of integration. While it does shrink the
size, it does mean the radio is more complex -- and thus repairs will
be more expensive and difficult.

In my case, I'm waiting to hear from the insurance company about
whether they'll cover the replacement of my set following lightning
damage that took out a few diodes in the power section, fried the
microphone preamp and finally nuked a DDS chip responsible for
generating the carrier sidetone. The end result is a radio that at
first, would not run off external power (this has been fixed), won't
demodulate SSB (sounds like an AM receiver with the volume turned
down), won't transmit AM/SSB/CW, and won't modulate a FM carrier. Due
to the usage of multi-layer PCBs, it's impossible to fix tracks that
may be damaged within the layers of the PCB... and the DDS chip in
question is no longer manufactured or supported. In short, a write-
off.

The lightning struck a tree in the neighbour's back yard, the
resulting earth potential rise caused the above damage, as well as
cooking some network equipment in our house, another neighbour's
computer, and several electrical goods within the property where the
strike occurred. So the old wisdom of unplugging everything is
especially true for the modern rigs -- not just the antenna, but
station earth and power as well!

Apart from this, they are great radios. Mine was brilliant, and I
hope to get it replaced at some stage. Interestingly, on 2m SSB, I
find my FT-290R II (with 25W linear) outperforms it on occasions, but
given the capabilities of the '897, it's worth the money. I dare say
the '817 is in much the same league, and are very popular amongst
microwave enthusiasts as they are all-mode and low-enough power to not
fry the backside out of transverters.

Regards,
Stuart Longland VK4MSL

In article
,
Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:

Seems like a great little rig, blasts out a whooping 2 watts
of RF power on batteries, do not know if I can handle
that much power, if I decide to apply for another license.

I haven't got a '817... I instead opted for its 100W cousin, the
'897D. The catch with all of these more modern "all-band" radios
though, is the high level of integration. While it does shrink the
size, it does mean the radio is more complex -- and thus repairs will
be more expensive and difficult.

Thanks for your comprehensive post on "all band" radios.

Sorry about the lightning frying your expensive rig; here I have
the same problems with lightning, came to the same conclusion
as you did, namely completely unplug _ALL_ leads to my rig.



I have not yet decided which way to jump as regards buying
a rig after my long 55 year absence from ham radio:

1) Completely portable (ordinary alkaline battery powered)
very low powered rig such as the Yaesu FT-817ND

2) Larger 100 watt mobile rig such as the Elecraft K3
or the Yaesu 897D

The Yaesu 897D certainly has impressive spec's


Presently I do not have enough smarts to make an intelligent
choice between the Yaesu 897D as compared to the more
expensive Elecraft K3, when it comes to the fine points
of both those rigs.

With the Elecraft, I lose the mobile capability, however
Elecraft advocates are very impressed with that fine rig.

Decisions, decisions... g

Mark

In article ,
Mark Conrad wrote:

Presently I do not have enough smarts to make an intelligent
choice between the Yaesu 897D as compared to the more
expensive Elecraft K3, when it comes to the fine points
of both those rigs.

The Elecraft K3 seems to have one of the best RF front ends currently
available on an amateur radio. It does extremely well at pulling in a
weak signal, when there are very strong signals on nearby frequencies.
If you're into contesting, DX, or Field Day competition, this looks
like radio to have.

For what's worth - the FD-857D is almost the same as the FT-897D in
most respects - just in a smaller package. These two radios give you
2-meter and 440 capability, in addition to HF and 6 meters.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Mark Conrad wrote in :

I have not yet decided which way to jump as regards buying
a rig after my long 55 year absence from ham radio:

1) Completely portable (ordinary alkaline battery powered)
very low powered rig such as the Yaesu FT-817ND

2) Larger 100 watt mobile rig such as the Elecraft K3
or the Yaesu 897D

The 897 will accommodate two battery packs and (or is it _or_?) a built-in
power supply. They're on my purchase list -- after we get the tax refund or
when I win the lottery.

The Yaesu 897D certainly has impressive spec's

Enough so that I have, and use, two of them. In their price class, they are
very impressive radios. I just swapped my Yaesu FT-450AT for one yesterday,
and that rig got K7SDW on 20 m with 10W output CW yesterday afternoon,
first crack off the bat.

Presently I do not have enough smarts to make an intelligent
choice between the Yaesu 897D as compared to the more
expensive Elecraft K3, when it comes to the fine points
of both those rigs.

I suspect that the K3 is, overall, the better radio, though it doesn't do
70 cm. At least it doesn't do 70 cm _yet_; I suspect a 70cm transverter
board is in the works, though I have no hard info on that. I'll get one
when I win the lottery.

With the Elecraft, I lose the mobile capability, however
Elecraft advocates are very impressed with that fine rig.

I've certainly read rave reviews on the K3. Acquisition is dependent on
coming into a sizeable bolus of cash, though. I'd also like to have a
Flex 5000 to play with, and an Icom 7[678]00, and a KW TS-2000, and a
Yaesu FT-2000, and some W-J or Cubic receivers, and ... .

Decisions, decisions... g

Yeah, but not the kind that hurt.

--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO

Tired old sysadmin

On Mar 21, 3:45*am, Mark Conrad wrote:
Thanks for your comprehensive post on "all band" radios.

Sorry about the lightning frying your expensive rig; *here I have
the same problems with lightning, came to the same conclusion
as you did, namely completely unplug * _ALL_ * leads to my rig.

He he... yeah... I've gone one step further -- using solar and
batteries to power my radios now. So that's one less bit of wire that
lightning can come in on. The experience has taught me the diligence
to unplug the rest.

Presently I do not have enough smarts to make an intelligent
choice between the Yaesu 897D *as compared to the more
expensive Elecraft K3, when it comes to the fine points
of both those rigs.

With the Elecraft, I lose the mobile capability, however
Elecraft advocates are very impressed with that fine rig.

Decisions, decisions... * *g

Indeed. I haven't looked at any of the Elecraft radios, my decision
was between the Icom IC-706MkII G, the Yaesu FT-857D and Yaesu
FT-897D. I wound up going for the latter because above all, I wanted
a radio that I could take with me portable, or stick in the rear
basket/luggage rack on my bike for bicycle mobile operation.

I rejected the Icom in the end on two grounds:
(1) Having used one during last year's JOTA... I found it difficult to
access what I considered, very rudimentary controls. I found its
menus awkward to use. I dare say it'd be better if I had the time to
read the manual more carefully, but that was my experience.
(2) Its small size meant it could not efficiently dissipate heat.
This meant the radio was prone to overheating problems. (I suspect
the FT857 would suffer this too.)

The '897 had two nice features: I could embed two batteries inside
with a combined 9Ah capacity, and there were two auto-tuners on the
market that could bolt onto the side. So I'd be able to pick up one
unit, and have almost a complete radio station -- just add antenna and
microphone. For the antenna, a squid pole works nicely, can be set up
almost anywhere and is lightweight. A dipole is also pretty easy to
carry and set up. So for a portable rig, the '897 was ideal.

My only gripe is that Yaesu for some reason decided that it would use
NiMH cells in its battery packs... Li-ion would have been lighter and
higher density. Heaven forbid, gel-cell batteries would do better
than NiMH! But that's the choice they went with, and we all have to
live with it.

I think the real questions a
(1) How often are you going to use it portable/mobile? (For me, I'd
was using my '897D portable at least once a week... and when my
handheld died -- I was using it mobile daily -- even on public
transport.)
(2) What bands are you likely to use? The K3 offers up to 6m with a
2m option, the '897D offers up to 70cm as standard. (I use 2m a _lot_)

In article
,
Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:

I think the real questions a
(1) How often are you going to use it portable/mobile? (For me, I'd
was using my '897D portable at least once a week... and when my
handheld died -- I was using it mobile daily -- even on public
transport.)
(2) What bands are you likely to use? The K3 offers up to 6m with a
2m option, the '897D offers up to 70cm as standard. (I use 2m a _lot_)

I agree that we have to try to anticipate our needs.

The all-in-one rigs offer *so* many great features that it is
downright befuddling trying to take advantage of all the features,
in one lifetime.


In the end, emotions and expectations affect a lot of us when it
comes to these purchases, rather than hard facts.


However, I *will* say that rig performance in a crowded band
can reveal a lot about the quality of one rig versus another.

That is why I have an emotional attachment to QRP rigs,
particularly CW QRP rigs, using exotic methods to fish out very
weak signals in a crowded environment. Fun, fun, fun.


I expect it is a lot more difficult to fish out a weak SSB signal. g

Wonder if any hams are experimenting with liquid nitrogen cooled
RF front ends to their rigs, to reduce thermal noise.



Getting back to reality for a moment, I have almost decided to base
my personal choice on whatever rig has the best receiver for weak
CW signals, in a crowded band.

If all rigs are essentially equal in this respect, then I get to
consider _other_ aspects of their performance.


If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

(assuming of course diversity antennas to minimize fading)

Playing with CW is just a personal choice, in my case.

Mark

Mark Conrad wrote in :

Wonder if any hams are experimenting with liquid nitrogen cooled
RF front ends to their rigs, to reduce thermal noise.

With the high background noise floor already present on Earth, would he
few tenths of a dB or so of thermal noise reduction from cryocooling
make any perceptible or significant difference? Above HFis a different
story, I think, but the noise floor on HF -- at least around here -- is
really rottenly high.

--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO

Tired old sysadmin

In article , mikea
wrote:

With the high background noise floor already present on Earth, would he
few tenths of a dB or so of thermal noise reduction from cryocooling
make any perceptible or significant difference? Above HFis a different
story, I think, but the noise floor on HF -- at least around here -- is
really rottenly high.

Yeah, guess you are correct, not to even mention the RF
coming in from the cosmos, let alone man-made RF.

Okay, time to break out my next hare-brained idea,
short million-watt pulses, bounced off all the space junk
we have floating around.

Lemme see, one-watt input, pulse length a billionth of
a second, one thousand pulses per second.

Hmm, where is the FCCs phone number, now all we have to
decide on is what frequency to use. Very low infrared band not
being used for anything right now, I could mount an infrared
window in my roof, and let a Yaesu modulated laser handle the rest.


Now ya see what happens when an old ham is away from his ARRL
handbook for 55 years.

Mark