Category Archives: MTR3B v4 Currahee

MTR3B v4 Currahee : Arrived!

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Christmas came….erm….late, but who cares?

I’ve kept everyone updated the last 3 months after getting in on the first 100 units and the delays that have slowed delivery. To be clear, I am ecstatic that LNR took the time to correct issues that were found and to update their manufacturing along the way to improve the final product.

Would I have liked to have had it earlier? Yes, but better right than early in my opinion.

Unfortunately it came after my Christmas holiday and time off, so being back to work it is back to prioritizing my time.

Having just had it on my desk for less than an hour and having a full afternoon and evening, I haven’t done much other than to turn it on, tune to a few stations, and play with the volume tuning. I also put the dummy load on and played with the capacitive touch keying a bit – will need more practice but so far it feels responsive and crisp.

With the switch to a color OLED, one of the updates they made post-launch was to change the hues of the colors to prevent wash out in direct light. It is overcast today and getting late, but here is what it looks like under a flashlight for reference.

Not a real comparison to a bright sunny day, but at least with 450 lumens on top of the overhead lighting it is still readable (no image enhancement).

Finally before I have to run, here it is next to a Venus SW-3B, another ultra small 3 band portable.

Lots more needs to be done to put this little radio through its paces, but out of the box it is – so far – exactly what I was expecting and wanting.

Small, 40m or higher, and low power draw.

More to come….

UPDATE

Just a few minutes after posting this I got curious and quickly hooked up my Palm Paddle to it. I wanted to see if attaching an external paddle disabled the touch keyer and yes, it does. 🙂

UPDATE 2

Adding a new photo of the internals

Question for everyone

What would be most useful for you as a consumer of this post? What about the new MTR3B could I provide to you as a reader, keeping in mind that the basics are all there on the LNR Precision website.

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MTR3B v4 Currahee Status

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Just received an email from LNR Precision about the status of the first 100 units they are shipping shortly.

This email is just to confirm that we have your order for the MTR3B V4 Currahee. If you ordered optional accessories such as extra power cords, etc., we have those as well and will ship with the radio once your build is complete. Orders for apparel, whiskey glasses, etc. that are not HAM equipment comes from a third party and ships separately. 

Builds for the initial 100 units are underway and some units have already begun shipping and will be arriving soon. We are processing everything in the ORDER that they were received so please be very patient as we work to fulfil all orders. The initial 100 units so out in 4 minutes so even if you were lucky enough to get your order in, you still may be near or towards the end of the list. We are not working on anything else until we get all 100 of these units shipped! Even within the last few weeks, we have performed some final firmware and component tweaks that we wanted to make sure was included for all units. If you have done surface mount component changes, you know that can be a little time consuming. Plus, we have an extremely high degree of QA testing, so we are methodical before shipping each radio to the customer. We are picking up speed in our process time so hopefully we will have your radio in your hands very soon.

In terms of notification, you will receive a notification of email once we have your unit complete and when it ships from our shop. That will include tracking detail from the USPS to your home (or to customs for international orders). This email is being sent to customers with pending orders. For customers that are awaiting our ordering system to open up, we will only do that when we are at final stages of shipping the initial 100 and can take new orders. We expect that to be near the end of November.

In summary, we have your order and are working through our list as quick as possible without sacrificing anything quality wise. You will receive a notification of when your unit is complete and ships. Thanks again for your patience and we think it will certainly be worth the wait. 

“The initial 100 units sold out in 4 minutes….”

Wow.