[Elecraft] K3 RTC - Battery and more

[David Ferrington, M0XDF]

OK understand now and you are correct - see embedded comments ...

On 25/1/08 11:01, "Arnie Grubbs" <vhuntertdi at yahoo.com> sent:
> 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.

Right, yes I see that now, in fact, it drifts out quite a lot if you don't
change band. Since I posted, and had left it on one band, it had drifted 30
seconds in 1 hour.

>> 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 left the radio run, and didn't change
> the band you were listening to.

Yes, that's what I did - 4 secs for an RTC is not good. Are you positive it
reads time on power up? I'll run more tests over the next few days.
I'm using NTP to get time and setting my clock to that (with someone reading
the time as I set it, so good to within a second). I have just set it, lets
see what it is around this time tommorrow.


Thanks for the explanation.
-- 
The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't
change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His. -Roger Ebert,
film-critic (1942- )