Elecraft K1 reviews

I use this rig everywhere - and even at home I prefer it over my FT857 just because it sounds far better on CW! I put it in my backpack when hiking through Tasmania, and it never let me down. I bought it with 4 bands, 40-30-20-17. Personally, I would have preferred 80-40-30-20 but when on the road, you hardly work QRP on 80... I made some great QSOs; 2 with the US (over 4000 miles) with only 30ft of wire in a tree! Usually, I can work what I hear. Especially the variable bandwidth is great. The noiseblanker is useless though. It probably works OK, but here in Europe there are hardly any powerlines above ground and ignitions are so well noise-cancelled that you don't hear them anyway. So it's a bit overkill here. I built the ATU as well and that matches about everything I connect to this baby. The VFO barely drifts and because the rig has both RIT and XIT, working DX using split is a piece of cake. Of course I have the battery option installed. Used several other QRP-rigs, but would not trade my K1 for anything else...