John, You are evidently storing the K2 in an 'extreme' environment and it may be picking up condensation as you surmised in your subject line.
Yes, in your case, I would think you may be wise to clean off the flux residue, but work with a Q-tip and work a small area at a time. On replacing the sockets - a definite maybe; but use only machined pin sockets if you do that. Try to get the tin-plated ones rather than the gold-plated ones because the firmware IC pins are tin and not gold-plated. In your salt-water environment, corrosion between the dissimilar metals can easily occur (yes, even with gold). You can find discussion about the corrosion at gold/tin junctions on the web if you look hard enough. The advantage of machined pin sockets is that they provide an air-tight connection and so minimize corrosion at the contact areas. 73, Don W3FPR > -----Original Message----- > > K2 Colleagues, > My boat-board (alas, 36 feet does not make a ship) K2/100 with KAT100 > gives me info80 displays on chilly damp mornings. It will step through > the bands but it takes two taps to do it, one to change the band and > then another to get rid of info80 and get the frequency display. > > I checked the archives but could find only a single note about this > problem and the gist of the comments were that that problem might have > been a construction anomaly. I have to assume that if this were an > endemic problem, it would have showed up at field day or with the guys > who camp out with these things. > > Has anyone else expereinced this problem? > > It's been suggested that I clean the interior of the radio-especially > around the IC pins and look for any stray flux, etc. and then spray the > entire interior with some sort of varnish made for this purpose. I > really don't want to do this, but am worried that I will ultimately > have to deal with corrosion problems if I don't do something. It has > even been suggested that the problem is in the IC sockets and that I > should replace them with gold-plated ones. > > Any ideas? > > John Ferguson KI4NGH M/V Arcadian now on the hard in Brick, NJ > > _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net 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
