[Elecraft] K3 Current Drain When Off

[Jim Brown]

Dave,

The reason this matters is that because Wayne comes from the world of 
QRP and backpacking, he has always worked very hard to minimize the 
current drain on a battery that you have lugged up a mountain (or 
charged from solar panels at home).  That's one benefit of owning an 
Elecraft radio.

I have my SO2R station powered from batteries that are solar charged, 
with the addition of an AC charger for contest weekends. All that wiring 
is behind an operating desk that is attached to the wall. "Pulling the 
plug" on the radios sounds simple, but it means adding a switch to the 
DC power line of each radio, in which a design parameter is to minimize 
the voltage drop with a 20A load.  That means a beefy relay in series 
with each radio, and a switch to control it. Now that I know it's a 4mA 
drain, I probably won't bother. with 40 mA per radio, I would. :)  And 
the relay probably draws 50-100 mA when the radios are on.

73, Jim K9YC

  On 10/19/2013 4:40 AM, Ken Wagner K3IU wrote:
> G'morning, Dave:
> My purpose in the posting below was to correct an error I had made 
> earlier.
> You are probably not missing anything, but IMHO this subject is far 
> more germane to the purpose of this reflector than many postings which 
> result in extraordinarily long lives here.
> 73, Ken K3IU
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> On 10/19/203 7:22 AM, Dave Wright wrote:
>> Maybe I'm missing something here, and I'm not trying to be a jerk, 
>> but we're talking about 40ma.  Most electronic devices these days 
>> don't use a "hard" power down, but rather a "soft" power-off state in 
>> order to maintain settings/calibration, allow for rapid 
>> startup/remote control usage, etc.