Our field testers are a very diligent and experienced bunch. They've
been working hard (on your behalf, as well as theirs) to exercise
every possible K3 feature and uncover opportunities for refinement.
The firmware development team (Wayne, N6KR, and Lyle, KK7P) has been
putting in very long hours to keep up, and we've made some minor
component changes as well. As a result, important features like FSK
mode, text decode/display, flexible VOX control, KRC2 support and many
others are being optimized under real-world conditions. We've also
verified our performance on multiple K3s both in the lab and on the
air. The field testers have really pounded on the user interface, and
the tweaking we've done has made the radio both easier to use and more
versatile.
The same engineers who are doing firmware and hardware development are
also heavily involved in completing the user documentation. This is
why we haven't been able to release a draft owner's manual or assembly
manual. We've got a lot of catching up to do on these tasks, so we're
revising our target shipping date for the first K3 production run to
start at the end of August.
K3 materials purchasing and manufacturing is well underway and our
staff has been working hard to make sure all of the key K3 components
arrive in Aptos at the right time. This is a tremendous task, as you
might imagine, and they have done an excellent job hunting down every
problem supplier and component. Our production staff will use the
extra time to build inventory and refine our automated K3 testing.
This will allow us to minimize any delay to the second and later
production runs. Our goal is to ship a stable, and high quality,
product starting with the first one out the door. We think you will be
pleased with our results.
We appreciate your patience as we transition into full K3 production.
We'll keep you informed of our progress, and look forward to your
feedback on the manuals as they near completion. We've already had
many offers to proofread -- thanks!
73,
Wayne, N6KR
Eric, WA6HHQ
