Elecraft sells kits. Troubleshooting is part of kit building, always
has been. Heath did some really great things with kits, but didn't
provide the support Elecraft builders get, both from the company and
this list ... but of course, the Internet hadn't been invented then
either. :-)
On 5/8/2013 4:02 PM, Don Wilhelm wrote:
Let me re-enforce what others have said on this subject. Some excerpts
follow:
- Look for the 'simple' things first.
The #1 thing! I've assumed all engineers and hams kept a notebook, and
practically everyone did BI [Before Internet]. Many of mine as a teen
were on the back of my log pages. If you don't keep one, start one.
Encountering what you think is a problem, start with the date, a
description of the problem you're seeing, and what you can see without
changing anything. A large fraction of all the things I initially
thought were "problems" turned out to not be. Every entry gets a date
... sometimes mine get a time. Working out the sequence of what I did
and what I find now is important. It's like writing a story to
yourself, you'll need it later.
- Break things down into basics - work into a good dummy load, work with
minimum connections to the transceiver. (It might be external equipment
causing the problem).
Absolutely! Isolation is the key. "Radio won't make RF suddenly and
behaves strangely," record in your notebook, and then get rid of stuff
in the equation, ONE BY ONE!.
Make ONE change at a time ... and observe and record all the effects.
- Verify your test equipment.
- Do not make assumptions.
This is probably the biggest hindrance to finding the problem. "Oh,
well it's gotta be in the <mumble> I'll start there." The odds of
winning the lottery are about the same that the problem you observe, if
it really is a problem, are in the <mumble>, given how many <mumbles>
there are in our radios today, and how many ways the <mumbles> can
confound us.
- What is working is just as important as what is not, but do verify
what is working first.
- Work in an orderly manner - take notes if your memory of what has been
done is lacking in the 'heat of battle'..
Yes, take notes, and then go back and read them before you decide to
make a test. Explain your proposed test to yourself, and explain to
yourself, why this test might shed any light on on what you're
observing? "What do I expect the outcome of the test to be?" "What
does it mean if the outcome is what I expect?" "What if the outcome is
a surprise?"
My then current engineering notebook was on the kitchen counter, my wife
asked if she could look at it, I said, "Sure, good luck," and she
finally said, "It reads like you're having a debate with yourself. I
don't understand any of the 'stuff' you're working with, but I thought
you all just knew how to do this." :-))
- If it was working before, there is only a single failure point.
Not always ... but I can count the number of times when that hasn't been
true on the fingers of one hand, and I retired from technology 13 years
ago after nearly 50 years. If it worked, and *truly* doesn't now, the
odds that it's more than one thing are about the same as the odds I'm
pregnant with twins. :-) Multiple things almost always fail together
only in a disaster cascade ... think aircraft crash, or Challenger,
Challenger started with a single point failure, all the rest just
happened too quickly to do anything about it.
- The problem is not usually the worst case scenario.
I'd say, "If there hasn't been a fire in a corner of the chassis, a
direct lightning strike, or the item has been physically destroyed,"
that isn't, "usually true" ... it's *always* true. :-) Count the number
of times Don has listed 1 or 2 or or sometimes maybe 3 things or
components to check first and was right, usually on the first. We
always think the worst, it rarely is.
Things are a lot different from the Heathkit days, I could not have
imagined my K2 then, and 50 years later, I built it. We had Elmers
then, maybe not so much now, however there are way more hams now, and
this list is probably the Ultimate Elmer, and Elecraft is probably the
Ultimate Heath. :-)
73,
Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013
- www.cqp.org
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