Sunday, January 20, 2013

Elecraft KX3...stand, CW key and battery charger.

KX3 on the new Nifty stand viewed at same angle as below pic

Last week I ordered a stand for my KX3 radio I had seen it on the Nifty ham radio site. I was there looking at their new KX3 radio guide. I have one of their guides for each of my radios and they are great. If you want to find a "how to" with your radio instead of searching through your manual these Nifty manuals have it all set out at your finger tips. So back to the KX3 stand.....I was surprised to see they were
KX3 on it's own legs
 offering a stand for the KX3. I have found here in the shack that when the radio is supported by it's own legs for me it sits on a funny angle still. The Nifty stand uprights the radio to a very easy to operate position......for me anyway. I have read some postings about this stand with some saying they didn't notice any real difference between the rigs legs and the new stand from Nifty.
  Also a week or so ago my KXPD3 keyer and KXBC3 NiMH battery charger came in. I have not yet had the time to install the KXBC3 charger. I have mounted the Key and it worked great right great out of the box. The key does come with other springs to change
the tension of the key. Up to this point I have not changed the key spring tension it works fine as it is.
My Begali key that I have was (I thought) giving me problems with extra dit's and dah's at times. It became very frustrating and even after adjusting the key as well as cleaning the contacts I would still have the same
New KX3 key
 problem. The Elecraft key was great and no extra code was being sent at all........it did not take me long to figure it out and for you CW buff's out there you may know what I mean when I say.......The Eleraft key was "loose", that is the best way I can describe it and the Begali is more "tight" The contact spacing on the KXPD3 is wider and in the past I would had seen this as sloppy spacing. BUT..it seems this works best for me and my joy with the code has come back. I then took my Begali key and opened up the contact spacing, now it too works fine for me. For some reason it never occured to me to open up the contact spacing on the key. I thought the tighter the contact spacing the better the keying ability....don't ask me where I got that idea!!

4 comments:

Jspiker said...

Hello Mike,

I've always set my keys for an extremely "light" touch also, and yes, experience the same problem with the "dits". Took me some time to figure it out also. I do find it possible to send faster this way with a lot less stress on the hands. I guess there's both good and bad to it all. One of these days I hope to own a Bengali key. I've always heard rave reviews of all their products.

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hi Mike, I can imagine the need for a stand for the KX3. When it's flat on the table, it isn't a convenience position for a transceiver. 73 Paul

VE9KK said...

Good morning John, I found that the tight setting of the key was just allowing me to send extra unwanted code. I will agree that the loose setting of the key can cause more stress on the hands. Maybe I just have to keep up the sending with the tight setting on the key and in time I will get used to it and stop the extra code sending trouble. Oh and the Bengali key is great it's nice and heavy so there is no moving of the key over the table. As well the magnetic return on the key is nice to have as well. It has a very very nice feel to it.
Mike

VE9KK said...

Good morning Paul, the KX3 does have a pair of legs that extend out from the back of the rig. In the picture of the KX3 it is using the extendable back legs in one picture and the other is on the stand. So even with the factory back legs extended I found it hard to read the LED and to tune the VFO as well.
Mike