I own K3 #757 and recently noticed some of the front panel buttons were not working. They either did not work at all or gave strange results. I contacted support, and they advised me to use the Config Menu SW Test to check all buttons.
If you have not tried it, go to Config Menu, rotate VFO B until the "SW test" entry is selected. Rotate VFO A until "Sca Adc" is selected. Now press every button, one at a time, except the Power button. When you press and hold a button, you will see the button´s row and column codes displayed as a single digit followed by 3 digits. As you hold each button pressed, the code should remain stable. Note the Band and Mode buttons have different codes for pressing the left or right sides. Also the 4 encoders to the left of VFO A (Shift, Width, Speed/Mic, Cmp/Pwr) have scan codes when pressed. When I tried the test, some of my buttons produced flickering codes or code values jumping around. Support advised me to push the suspect buttons down firmly and move my fingertip around as I pressed down. This seemed to help, but I am still showing a few problems. I checked with a friend owning a K3. He tested his buttons and found the last digit of Fine and Rate flicker. Support said a slight flicker of 1-2 digits is OK. Most of them should be steady at one reading. My K3 is out of warranty. Options are buying a new Front Panel board at about $400 or sending the Front Panel to Elecraft for repair at the standard hourly rate. I am going to monitor the problem for a while and see if there is some pattern to the failures. You may want to test all your buttons. I had never tested them before and I might have noticed a problem before the warranty expired. It is also a good idea to test the buttons when you think you are chasing a different problem. My original symptom was the RX button would not switch to the receive antenna. I even tried reloading the firmware before realizing multiple buttons were not working. 73, Paul K5ESW ______________________________________________________________ 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
