[Elecraft] My ongoing saga 0838

[W B Reese]

Dear Elecrafters,

By and large I'm a happy camper, but I've had a few events I'd like to 
share with this group.  My K2/100/KAT100 is working just fine now, I was 
QNI on PARG (Pacific Amateur Radio Guild) 7045 KHz about an hour ago with 
no problems.

1. The scan isn't right.  After about 25 seconds it's supposed to move on 
and it doesn't do this feature.  I have to be there to make it go on by 
either dropping the RF gain or turning the VFO to a clear spot.  If I stop 
the scan and press PF2 to resume, it does not mute and advance 500 Hz, it 
just stays where it is and I continue to hear whatever signal it stopped on 
without interruption.

2. I set up a mobile in my car.  Beautiful mobile!  It's great when I'm 
parked, but when I begin to move down the road the stations I'm talking to 
report I'm breaking up.  Several guys have suggested the antenna or coax 
are loose, but I don't think so.  If they were intermit, I would hear it on 
key up as well as key down.  Other possibilities are the paddle and 12 
volts failing.  Again, if either of these were failing, I would hear the 
breaking up on my side tone.  When I send, the side tone is OK in the car, 
so the intermit is something between the key and the antenna out on the 
rig, something in the transmitter section failing with the vibration.  By 
the way, it works great at home sitting on my desk.

3A. This morning I fired up at about 5:30 AM.  Nothing much going on, and 
my amplifier is temporarily out of service, so I'm using a 15' high dipole 
without much DX.  I sent a few CQ's on 40, 80, and 160 but didn't get any 
answers.  Mostly I just scanned & hoped for a strong signal that I could 
raise on the West Coast.  About 6 AM I went up to 80 fone and when I 
pressed the tune button and held it in to activate the KAT100 it locked up 
and gave me a steady key down.  The KAT100 did not tune.  After some length 
of time I turned off the power supply and restarted the K2 and went up to 
40 CW.  When I pressed my key, I got a steady key down (ZLD) at full power 
even after releasing the key.  My next discovery was the menu button was 
not working and the fan had stopped.

3B. I shut the rig down, disconnected everything including the key, the 
coax to the KAT100, the I/O etc. everything unplugged.  I turned on the 
K2/100 and observed the same behavor as in 3A noted above.  I tried to 
reset using "5757x" as outlined in the manual, but this gave no 
relief.  Following that I powered up at least a couple more times and noted 
the behavour in 3A above was unchanged.

3C. I shut off the power supply and carefully read the manual for about 
2-1/2 hours,  I didn't find anything that seemed related to my problem, so 
I plugged everything back in & fired it up.  Everything was fine!  The fan 
works, the menu works, the KAT100 works, all is well.  Everything works.  I 
made a couple of SSB contacts on 80 before the band went out with good 
reports and checked into PARG on CW.  Everything is just hunky-dory FB!!!

4.  Anyone have any thoughts to share with me?

Curiously Yours,

TR WB6TMY
S/N 0838
2.03d 1.07