[Elecraft] K3 Check Your Buttons

[Paul Ferguson]

I own K3 #757 and recently noticed some of the front panel buttons were not 
working. They either did not work at all or gave strange results. I contacted 
support, and they advised me to use the Config  Menu SW Test to check all 
buttons. 

If you have not tried it, go to Config Menu, rotate VFO B until the "SW test" 
entry is selected. Rotate VFO A until "Sca Adc" is selected. Now press every 
button, one at a time, except the Power button. When you press and hold a 
button, you will see the button´s row and column codes displayed as a single 
digit followed by 3 digits. As you hold each button pressed, the code should 
remain stable. Note the Band and Mode buttons have different codes for pressing 
the left or right sides. Also the 4 encoders to the left of VFO A (Shift, 
Width, Speed/Mic, Cmp/Pwr) have scan codes when pressed.

When I tried the test, some of my buttons produced flickering codes or code 
values jumping around. Support advised me to push the suspect buttons down 
firmly and move my fingertip around as I pressed down. This seemed to help, but 
I am still showing a few problems. 

I checked with a friend owning a K3. He tested his buttons and found the last 
digit of Fine and Rate flicker. Support said a slight flicker of 1-2 digits is 
OK. Most of them should be steady at one reading.

My K3 is out of warranty. Options are buying a new Front Panel board at about 
$400 or sending the Front Panel to Elecraft for repair at the standard hourly 
rate. I am going to monitor the problem for a while and see if there is some 
pattern to the failures.

You may want to test all your buttons. I had never tested them before and I 
might have noticed a problem before the warranty expired. It is also a good 
idea to test the buttons when you think you are chasing a different problem. My 
original symptom was the RX button would not switch to the receive antenna. I 
even tried reloading the firmware before realizing multiple buttons were not 
working.

73,
Paul
K5ESW