[Elecraft] [K3] ...and then there was silence (well almost)

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

Here's a gut guess...

Something in the Titan has gone sour.  You read 300 watts on the
Diamond because the line SWR is so high.  Whatever is causing the high
SWR from the antenna is causing all kinds of problems with RF in the
shack. There is something the matter with the Diamond read on
reflected power, so it's telling you everything is fine out the line,
except it isn't.

I have a Titan I now use as an alternate listen antenna, and if it
gets water inside, or that 80 meter cap at the top goes bad, the whole
thing behaves poorly.  It's very touchy.

The K3 is the last place I'd look until the above ruled out.

73, Guy.

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 8:50 PM, Dick Roth, KA1OZ <raroth7 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Greetings fellow Elecrafters--
>
> I was chasing RF in the shack, which had been causing cqrlog to lock up.
>  I was using the loudness of the hum coming out of my PC's outboard
> stereo speakers to gauge how much raw RF there might be.
>
> Well at one point the shack got very quiet and I thought that I might
> have blown out the speakers.  No...not the case.  Here are the bottom
> line symptoms:
>
> Any change of band and the swr goes sky high upon keying.  I hit the
> "ATU Tune" and the ATU quickly reduces the swr from ohmigawd to less
> than 2:1.  The output power, which had taken a dive when the swr was
> high, comes back to a dialed 100W.  However, the Diamond SX-100 watt/swr
> meter I keep in the line indicates that I'm transmitting almost 300W!
> Naw...can't be.
>
> Next major symptom:  sensitivity is gone.  Even the Boston big gun 50000
> Watt WBZ, up the road, is in the noise.  I use MW to chase baseball games.
>
> I have removed the wattmeter and my B&W LP filter as well as the surge
> suppressor from the line so that nothing stands in the way of my path to
> my Titan-DX vertical and the symptoms remain the same.
>
> The symptoms barely change if I bypass the ATU.  I have a sneaking
> suspicion that I've blown the ATU and opened one side of the signal
> path.  That would explain the loss of sensitivity and possibly the
> ridiculously high output power as indicated by the external wattmeter.
> The on-board meters shows a proper 100W out.
>
> I figured I'd throw this out there to the Elecraft Knowledge Base before
> tearing the rig apart.
>
> K3>>>Diamond SX-100 wattmeter>>>B&W Low Pass Filter>>>surge
> suppressor>>>antenna feed to the world.
>
> --
> 73,
> Dick ka1oz
> Middleborough, MA
>
> Radio:  Elecraft K3/100(Kit) SN 859
> Antenna:  Titan-DX
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