[Elecraft] K2 Condensation?

[Don Wilhelm]

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
>
>