[Elecraft] K3 RTC - Battery and more - software and RTC chip time.

[Arnie Grubbs]

Hello David,

Let me try to clear up what I was trying to say..

This is what I think is happening:
The radio has a Real Time Clock chip that keeps track of the
time when the radio is powered off.  From what I see, the
radio will 'read' that chip to find out what the time is when it powers up.

After that, it looks like the radio "keeps time" all by itself using internal
software routines...
This is is what I gather from watching the time while messing 
with the radio. It seems that it does not look at the real time clock chip again,
UNLESS you change bands, or power off and on again. Then it looks like it 
reloads the software clock from the real time clock chip.

This can be seen by the clock display on the radio
"catching up" to the correct time in the RTC when I change bands.
My radio time display will at that instance, jump a number of seconds (or min.) and will
be back "on correct time" again, until it slowly drifts off again.

-------
> My K3 clock, which I set about 18 hrs ago and the rig has been off for about
> the last 12 of those, has lost about 4 seconds.
--------

>From what I read of your statement, you let it sit for 12 hour powered down
and then turned it back on. IF that is what you did, it read the RTC chip time at
power up, and thats what you were seeing on the display. So the battery backed up time
chip was only off 4 seconds in 18 hours. Thats probably different than what you would
see if you had left the radio run, and didn't change the band you were listening to. 

IF you were to just let the radio sit for 12 hours powered up, say, listening to a time
standard broadcast, and then come back and compare at the end of the period to the 
broadcast, I bet you would see a larger time difference.  On mine, I see a difference
after only a few min.   When I change bands, the radio corrects the time display by
reading from the RTC chip again... as it will jump many seconds in an instant. 

Hope that helps to try to explain what I see going on with my radio.

73 - Arnie KA0NCR  



--- "David Ferrington, M0XDF" <M0XDF at Alphadene.co.uk> wrote:

> I'm kinda lost here, I thought this thread started with the K3 clock losing
> time - what's RTC? - Is it Real Time Clock, in which case, that's what it
> is. If you meant Radio Time Control, that it is not afaik.
> So I don't believe this rig is picking up time signals from anywhere?
> 
> Someone put me right here if I've got this wrong?
> 
> My K3 clock, which I set about 18 hrs ago and the rig has been off for about
> the last 12 of those, has lost about 4 seconds.
> 
> Now I don't think that's particularly good, even if its based on simple
> electronics with no kind of sync with network etc.
> 
> I presume Eric or Wayne will see this post sometime and so they will be
> aware, but I'm not about to worry them or me about it right now, they have
> enough on their plates.
> 
> 73 de M0XDF, K3 # 174, HexKey # 375
> 
 



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