>>> KX3 SHACK STAND

STAND PROUD

As lots of people have said already, the KX3 looks neat on it's little legs, but it's not quite practical in the shack. When you come home from a SOTA outing, you just want to put the KX3 down and connect it up without hunting around for a space for it to live until the next outing. I tried sitting it down on the rear legs but the angle was always wrong for convenient working, so I started to think of a stand for it.

I spotted an old, small computer monitor at work which was ready to be binned, so I removed the small stand and took it home. After a few minutes looking at the stand and the KX3, I came up with an idea for connecting them. I wanted to be able to walk into the shack and simply drop the KX3 in place without any fuss and without any fasteners. So I came up with the idea of bonding a steel strap to the back of the heatsink which would overhang slightly and clip over the stand-brackets.

So I bought some GORILLA SUPER TOUGH glue and removed the heatsink from the radio. After moistening the heatsink with a fine mist water spray bottle, I applied a thin layer of the glue to the strap and then put them together  with a 6mm overhang. I then clamped them tightly together and left them to set for a couple of hours.

After putting the heatsink back on the radio, it was very easy to lower the radio onto the stand. It was very stable and didn't wobble at all when operated. Perfect!

I have now decided to expand on this idea a little, by adding another bracket for the radio to "rest on". I also needed to order some short 'PigTails' to avoid putting undue strain on the antenna connections.

Note that the monitor-stand brackets can be adjusted to tilt the radio up or down. Very handy! Here's a couple of photos showing how the bracket and strap look...