[Elecraft] K3: Line-In dead (or heavily attenuated)

[James Sarte]

Chokes look fine but L4 and L5 aren't directly connected to line-in; they
seem to be connected to the microphone in though. I took the KIO3 apart and
traced the line-input circuit for continuity.  The whole board looks good
with no cold solder joints.

Anyway, I put everything back and voila... works like new.  In fact, even
better than before.  I only need to set the input gain to about 10 to get a
nice signal in from DM780 and registering about 5.5 to 6 bars ALC.

This leads me to think two things;

1.  Something was loose and my refitting the boards took care of it
2.  There's still a cold solder somewhere that gets affected by heat

I'll leave the rig on for a while and keep testing.  I'm keeping my fingers
crossed.

73 de James K2QI

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 9:10 PM, Joe Subich, W4TV <lists at subich.com> wrote:

>
> Check the RF chokes L4 and L5 on the KIO3 Audio IO board.
>
> 73,
>
>   ... Joe, W4TV
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
> > [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of James Sarte
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 7:06 PM
> > To: Elecraft
> > Subject: [Elecraft] K3: Line-In dead (or heavily attenuated)
> >
> >
> > I've sent an email over to Aptos hoping that they may know
> > what's going on with my K3.  A few days ago, I noticed that
> > sometimes the amount of line-in gain required for a digital
> > signal from DM780 varied quite a bit.  Some days, all it took
> > was a level of 14 and I'd have about 6 bars of ALC.  On
> > others, gain had to be set to nearly 25.  Well, today it
> > seems that my line-in died all together or at the very least
> > has become heavily attenuated.  I now have to crank the line
> > gain all the way up to 60 to get about 3 bars ALC!!
> >
> > I have checked, and no audio settings have been changed on my
> > PC.  I even plugged in a set of speakers to the line out jack
> > on the PC and everything is fine.  What is weird is that
> > sometimes, fiddling around with the mic/line input settings
> > in the Main menu fixes things for a while, but then it's back
> > to almost zero input after a while.
> >
> > Any suggestions?  Lyle seems to think it could be a bad
> > solder.  I'm going to let the rig cool off and see if the
> > problem occurs while cold.  I've also reloaded the current
> > firmware twice, plus went back to 3.19 just to make sure it
> > wasn't a FW issue.
> >
> > --
> > 73 de James K2QI
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-- 
73 de James K2QI