My K3 and KPA500 have lived happily for months, ever since their first blissful night together. But today something bizarre happened, and I'm just wondering if anyone else has seen this:
I had a couple of QSOs on 15 meters, with everything working FB as it always does. But then a little later when I tried to call a DX station on CW, the amp faulted, claiming PWRIN HI. I reset it, verified that the power in was 30W, and tapped the key. Same result. Then (here's the bizarre part) I reset it, pressed TUNE, and advanced the power from its normal tune level of 8W up to 30W; the amp put out 500W, no problem. Then I set the K3's transmit output power to 3W and tapped the key; PWRIN HI fault. So in other words it tolerated 30W of drive if I applied it via the TUNE button, but not even 3W of drive in normal transmit. I checked the antenna, the grounding connections, and everything else; nothing had changed from the configuration that has been working perfectly on all bands for months. Then I tried the amp on all other bands, 80 thru 10. All operations perfectly normal. Finally I powered off the amp and switched the rear 0/1 switch off, and fired it up again. 15 meters returned to normal, and all is well. My guess is that that the PIC chip is addressing some volatile memory where intermediate values are stored, and a memory location pertinent to 15 meters only got scrambled by something. But that's just a guess; actually, I dunno what happened, but I sure hope it doesn't happen any more. Anybody have any thoughts? Tony KT0NY -- http://www.isb.edu/faculty/facultydir.aspx?ddlFaculty=352 ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
