[Elecraft] KAT3 L10 burned

[Ken K3IU]

Good Morning Guilio:

This is not an uncommon failure. About six(6) months ago the fix was to 
remove L10 and jumper the holes where L10 was installed with a suitable 
piece of wire. I did that on mine and have had no problems with it since.

Be sure to email K3support at elecraft.com. There may be another fix now 
that I don't know about.

73,
Ken K3IU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On 1/6/2010 6:55 AM, Giulio Pico - IW3HVB wrote:
> Yesterday I paid a visit to a firnd, Giancarlo I3GKK, who was very
> worried about an accident happened 3 days ago.
> Suddenly, during a brief tx period (10 seconds) at 100 W into a Windom
> antenna, he saw smoke coming out from the top panel of his K3.
> Since then no power out on all bands (measured with an external wattmeter).
> The internal wattmeter of the K3 reads correctly and the supply current
> is regular, on both high and low power, so it seems that the TX stages
> are ok.
> Looking into the area for smoky parts I found that L10 (96 nH), at the
> output of the KAT3 unit is badly burned. The enamel on the wire is gone
> and with the ohmmeter the inductance measures more than 7 ohms :-/
> My guess is that SWR was a little too high, but within the tuning range
> of the KAT3. It was raining heavily when the fault has occoured.
> Measured the antenna with the MFJ-259B and it seems almost ok on all
> bands (less than 2 in the worst band, all the others less than 1.4).
> Anyone have had similar experiences?
>
> 73 de Giulio IW3HVB
>
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