6700 vs Hilberling vs K3 vs K3S

W9OY

So you don't think it snarky to accuse Howard and the others of cooking the books in Flex's favor??? Please get a clue

KY6LA_Howard

@Walt

I think you were not reading this report correctly. 

While I did set up the 6700 and I was an observer, the comments I quoted in this report are NOT mine but rather they come from Pavel OK1MY.   Pavel has a very heavy investment in fully loaded K3's which he uses for CW contesting and prior to acquiring the 6700 would be classified as K3/Hilberling biased over his Icom 7800.  

BTW Pavel owns a company that makes Specialized Coax so there is a great deal of high quality cabling all over the place.

Both Ben N6MUF and Pavel OK1MY worked the radios in CW mode. 

I made some SSB contacts.

On SSB and CW, we particularly targeted very weak stations such as M0AAA/P who was running portable to a long wire at a picnic with 15W and totally jammed stations like TM200EN (a 100W station in France commemorating the 200 anniversary of Napoleons Exile). 

We then ran ABC tests on the same antenna..

With M0AAA/P...due to the 3 MonstIR over 3 antenna we were the only station working him at all as he was extremely weak so we really had a good chance to test the different radio's weak signal performance over about 20 minute QSO.   The 6700 was consistently the best receiver over both the Hilberling and the K3S on this very weak station.  In some of his responses where he was not readable on the Hilberling or K3 we could still make him out on the 6700.

On TM200EN.. it was a traffic jam...they were handing out special event QSL Cards..
Here is where both Ben and Pavel really said that the superior filters on the 6700 blew everything else out of the park.

AGAIN... the report is from Pavel OK1MY... I just documented his report..

Bill -VA3WTB

All Howard did was give comments about using the Flex along with other radios. So it is their views the Flex was tops. Is he not aloud to say that here on this Flex site?

Steve K9ZW

I've spent hours running the Hilberling PT-8000A and found it to be a really fun & rewarding radio to use. 

https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2014/11/28/very-interesting-hiberling-pt-8000-in-the-k9zw-shack/

https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/comparison-part-1-hilberling-pt-8000-in-the-k9zw-shack/

https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2015/02/15/comparison-part-2-hilberling-pt-8000-in-the-k9zw-shack/

https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/using-a-high-performance-radio-operating-the-hilberling-pt-800...

I did struggle with the incomplete manual written by someone overly familiar with the PT-8000A and then translated into English.  Got tripped up by some fairly simple things which once I jot the hang of really worked out pretty well.

Really couldn't think of a finer shack than one that had a PT-8000A plus SmartSDR Flex-6x00 radios. 

Of course YMMV but only if you actually run QSO's with a PT-8000A  - have found an unrealistic fixation on the price as the first and only object leading to a fair number of armchair pundants who haven't made a contact with the PT-8000A.  Bluntly these spectators' observations are nothing like hands on operators' observations. 

In terms of price there is a strong argument that both the PT-8000A and the Flex-6x000 series transceivers are amazing values, having rolled up what was million dollar technology and highest respective levels of craftsmanship into ham-affordable rigs. 

Both lead a serious amount of Shack enjoyment - that elusive goal "Fun" seems to come with them.

73

Steve

K9ZW

KY6LA_Howard

The Hilberling is the example I use to demonstrate that you can make a very good Hardware Defined Radio if you spend enough money on it but the law of diminishing returns really starts to show up...

It was a superb radio when I used it at OK1MY in 2012.. but definitely felt dated when I used it this year....

At Friedrichshafen they attached big monitor so that they could try to keep up with the SDR's using the RadioComm SDR Emulator Interface Program.