[Elecraft] K2/100 burn-in

[N2TK, Tony]

Hi Tom,
I had my K2/100 driving an Alpha 87A at WP2Z for ARRL SSB test. The K2 got
quite hot and the fan ran a lot. But no ill effects other than keep your
hands off the cooling fins.

N2TK, Tony



-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net]On Behalf Of Tom Althoff
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 1:15 PM
To: Elecraft
Subject: [Elecraft] K2/100 burn-in

Well I just gave my KPA-100 a workout on 10M.   I set the rig at 27WPM 100W
with a 20 second CQ (3 CQ's + 2 callsigns sent twice) with a 4 second pause
in auto repeat message mode.

I did not get an answer in the 30 minutes that I called but I also did not
get any Hi Temp warning.   The heatsink does get quite warm and with the 5:1
ratio on TX heat vs RX cool off time I might have been exceeding Elecraft's
concept of intermittant amateur service.    If I used the K2 as the CQ
machine on 10M while looking for QSO's on another band I think I'd put a fan
on the K2 for peace of mind if not necessity.

Has anyone really hammered their K2/100 with high CQ or QSO rates for a 24
hour period without a secondary fan?   I'd be curious how it held up and
were you successful in cooking eggs on it?   It might make a good George
Forman portable contest grill.

It reminds me of the old QST ad (Alpha?) showing their amp putting out a KW
with a brick on the key and each month they'd update the numbers to show it
was still going strong after X hours.

My K2 is now going to take the seat of honor below my Orion as my primary
rig.   The Orion I prefer for SSB (mainly because the VOX works so much
better) but there is NOTHING that I've pulled out of the noise and QRM with
the Orion set for 100Hz bandwidth that I couldn't copy as well (and at times
more comfortably) on the K2.

73 de Tom K2TA

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