[Elecraft] K3 RX issue with KAT3A?

[Udo Langenohl - DK5YA]

The suspect was pursued, caught, arrested and taken to the garbage with 
the soldering iron. It was a defective pin diode that caused the loss of 
10 dB. Thanks to all who have given me advice.

73 Udo, DK5YA

Am 02.11.2015 um 16:18 schrieb Udo Langenohl - DK5YA:
> Gents,
>
> in spring I made an upgrade to my K3 (#59xx) with the internal ATU
> KAT3A. After this I guessed that there is a noise drop on all bands from
> 160 up to 10, but was not 100% sure. The strange thing: neighbor
> stations with similar setup always gave much better reports than me, at
> least 10 dB better. I was struggling a lot with my antennas, checked
> coax every now and than etc. but everything was o.k. At that time my
> main RX became suspicious.
>
> Last week I bought a K3/10W (#39++) from a local ham as a backup here in
> my shack. Comparing both rigs shows a huge difference in sensitivity.
> Very weak signals, almost in the noise on 10 Meters are clearly audible
> in the freshly bought K3 while there's almost nil on my old one. So i
> fired up my HP8664A signal generator today and found my old K3 to be at
> least 9dB worst compared to new one. This is for the main RX in my old
> K3 while the second RX iny my old K3 is almost similar to the new K3
> when fed through the AUX input (not through ANT 1!!).
>
> So whats going on here? Something broken in my old K3 when I made the
> upgrade with KAT3A? Wrong wired? I have no idea, perhaps you got one?
>
> Udo, DK5YA