[Elecraft] K3 Heat

[Hisashi T Fujinaka]

On Sat, 16 May 2009, Jim Brown wrote:

> On Fri, 15 May 2009 09:14:50 -0700 (PDT), Hisashi T Fujinaka wrote:
>
>> Well, you're all ignoring the longevity reduction with heat.
>
> I'm certainly not, and I doubt that the designers of the radio have
> either. K6XX, an engineer who has looked carefully at the design,
> considers it very well designed from the point of view of heat and
> ventilation. The lead engineer is the same guy who designed the
> K2/100. They've sold close to 7,000 of them, and I've never heard
> of a problem with heat.

Creative snipping, I'm going to do it too.

I was talking about 80-year old radios, and keeping the radio running
for that long. You're talking about 10, maybe?

> If you want to be super conservative, set up a small muffin fan to
> blow cool air on the radio. And, of course, calibrate the
> temperature sensors properly. But don't mess with the design.
> There's far more to it than meets the eye, especially the eye of
> someone who isn't an EE with this sort of design experience under
> his belt.

And that's me, as I did semiconductor design.

I'm just saying, if you want fans, use fans. Let people mess with the
radio if they want. That's why I liked the K2, and one of the reasons I
don't have a K3 yet. (The real reason is that I had to take my antenna
down and so $2k seemed a bit much when I don't have anything to connect
the radio to.)

Also, you said you had several K3's. You're in a whole different league
than people who just have one and want to screw around with it. People
do mods to their FT1000's too, and those rigs are meant to keep their
lids on.

One reason I think screwing around with the radio is good is because
that's how you learn things. Another is that it's fun. Sure you violate
the warranty, but that's the price of admission. I know the designers
made some tradeoffs in this radio; there's no way around that. What's
wrong with second-guessing them and doing experiments as long as you
keep your signal clean and within regulations?

-- 
Hisashi T Fujinaka - htodd at twofifty.com
BSEE(6/86) + BSChem(3/95) + BAEnglish(8/95) + MSCS(8/03) + $2.50 = latte