Great, Ed! I bet most of that time was spent removing/replacing screws! I mention that because I often work servicing radio, radar and other electronics in the field. It's not uncommon to find a panel fitted for 10 screws held in place with only four or five.
Sure, that panel isn't likely to fall off with four or five screws holding it, but the shielding and mechanical integrity are badly compromised. One time I visited a large bulk-cargo ship that had to be manually steered every moment - a huge problem with the small crews large ships carry today. They had been doing that for almost a week crossing the Pacific before they had me jump on a fast launch and catch up with them as they were traveling up the Sacramento River - a very narrow channel where steering glitches are most unwelcome. I found that, in some far away port, a tech had failed to tighten the screws on a gyrocompass amplifier module. That caused the auto-pilot to go crazy at random intervals. With the K3, loose or missing screws can lead to strange noises and birdies in the receiver or one might experience troublesome effects like "RF in the shack" that are really just "RF leaking into the wrong place", jumping frequency, changing SWR while transmitting, distortion in transmit audio or mysterious "shut downs" during a QSO, just to name a few possibilities the result of bad shielding or loose connectors. You're not likely to run the shack "aground" on a river bank, but why suffer a poorly working rig just to save a few minutes? And, in the K3's advanced mechanical design, the relatively lightweight case's exceptional strength is due in no small part to the combined strength of all of those screws. Without all of them, the mechanical strength of the K3 is reduced. Bottom line, to have the K3 work properly, do *not* randomly leave parts out or installed loosely after working on it - even screws ;-) Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- K3 Field Test has been trying out some draft instructions for removing the KRX3 and re-installing it. This is necessary for changing crystal filters in either the main receiver or the KRX3, or adding/removing other K3 options. It took me four minutes to remove the KRX3 module and nine minutes to re-install it. Another minute would be required to remove the front bottom cover to get at the main receiver crystal filter screws and several minutes to remove the shields from the KRX3 to get at its crystal filters. All in all, not a big deal, and once again a great tribute to the K3 design. 73, Ed - W0YK _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
