[Elecraft] K3 drift

[ANDY NEHAN]

Well today I had another play, 10MHz source(locked to Droitwich) and counter left on for a couple of hours so I was happy they were stable. Tuned into my 10MHz signal and measured a tone on my frequency meter of 595Hz on a cold K3 - now over the next 30 minutes it drifted down to 583Hz. So over the next few hours I conducted experiments the last of which was to run CW continuously for 1hr (wow) 100watts into a dummy load (10MHz band) then when I went to measure the tone on the 10MHz oscillator it was 582Hz and drifted another 1Hz over 30 minutes.
Now as far as I am concerned that feels like very small beer. My only "observation" is that it did drift 12Hz in 30 minutes - but I think I can live with that. Maybe I am lucky but this feels good to me. The PA temperature reached 48C and stayed there. The K3 manual is quite clear (page 9 ) that 100watts on CW for 10 minutes - but then my house is quite cold (18C not 25C).
I think I have bigger fish to fry than worry about this drift. YMMV.
Andy G4HUE