[Elecraft] [K3] Disappearing VCO error

[Ian White GM3SEK]

After the K3 had been running for a few hours yesterday evening, just 
listening to the bands, it stopped working with ERR PL1 (and PL2). These 
were genuine hardware errors - neither of the two VFOs would tune and 
both receivers were dead. Attempts to re-calibrate the VCOs ended with 
ERR VCO and ERR VC4.

I switched off and left the problem overnight, and this morning both 
VCOs calibrated successfully with no further errors so far.  (A notable 
difference was the successful calibrations took much longer over some of 
the steps. The failed attempts had rattled through all the steps at the 
same high speed.)

The firmware was MCU 4.12 / DSP 2.60 / FPF 1.13.  After everything was 
working correctly again, I have updated to MCU 4.14.

Hardware is K3/100 #724, with KAT3, KRX3, KXV3 and all modifications to 
date.

The question is: why did this happen? And with CQWW SSB coming up, could 
it happen again?


-- 

73 from Ian GM3SEK
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek