My K3S/100 has gone into an unusual state where the maximum power available - on any mode, any band - is about 1.5-2W. This is independent of any PWR setting above 1W, and the PA does not engage at higher PWR settings.
All this began on Friday afternoon when I switched on the rig. The K3S had been working normally a few weeks ago, but hadn't been used for transmitting in the meantime. An external power meter confirmed that the TX could not deliver more than about 1.5-2W. This was confirmed again by the failure messages from a TX power calibration. While troubleshooting, I progressively uninstalled the KPA3 followed by the KPAIO3A adapter board, but with no change. Even in the simplest 10W configuration with only the small bridge board in place between the two PA connectors, the K3S would still only deliver 1.5-2W with no effective PWR control. I also tried most of the other common tests: unplugged everything else; reloaded an older saved configuration; EEINIT; reloaded the saved configuration again. No change. But I also noticed that the firmware was one release behind the times, so for lack of any other ideas I did a complete firmware upgrade to the latest MCU 5.35 / DSP 2.86 / FPF 1.24 - and it started working again! Normal power output up to 10W, and fully variable up to 100W after reinstalling the PA module. Another TX calibration confirmed that everything was fine. That pleasant surprise seemed to indicate that the problem had been more related to firmware than to hardware. By Friday evening, I believed the problem had gone away... but I should have known better. Today it has failed again, exactly the same way as before. Reloading the same latest firmware didn't work a second time. So now it's the weekend and I'm all out of ideas. While I wait until Monday to contact Elecraft Support, could anyone in the group offer any suggestions, please? 73 from Ian GM3SEK ______________________________________________________________ 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 Message delivered to [email protected]
