[Elecraft] Well Hell.... I just bricked my K3s

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

The eternal lesson, which most of us cannot convince our emotions to
believe in the time of trouble, is that most problems are not the rig
per se, but lie in all the stressed connections, etc.

*IF* I remember at the time of trouble, that the problem is likely
elsewhere, I STILL have to almost bite off my tongue to first go
looking externally and not emotionally automatically blame the box I'm
using at the moment.

Always rule out the mechanicals. This includes any cable entry
connections in the unit.

Not that there haven't been issues with my 7 year old K3 over the
years, including a couple of botched mods. A couple of years ago I
finally traced a trouble to a PL259 out in the shed I forgot to solder
in 1993 -- how many dreary criticisms can you drag out of that?
Anywhere possible, ALL of that braided coax is going away this summer.
Hardline connectors too expensive? Any flexible stuff will be flooded.
The stuff is not too expensive spread out over 20 years. And if you
now need to pay to get certain types of outdoor help from time to
time, the hardline/flooded line pays for itself the moment you install
it.

I am doing a rewire of the shack with a reverse oriented six pack so I
can switch rigs/amps to one of two hardlines going down to the ham
entry point in the garage. Among the possibilities on the times 6 side
of the 6-pack switch is a line to the work bench and a line to my AIM
4170. Some time soon I will have stored calibrations of every possible
coax path out to antennas, and stored R,X,RL curves on every antenna.
Something gets weird with an antenna, I'll switch from an amp output
to the AIM input. I'll start with the antenna and move toward the
shack.

Too much wasted time otherwise. I'm tired of shooting myself in the foot.

73, Guy K2AV


On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 12:06 PM, K9MA <k9ma at sdellington.us> wrote:
> On 7/3/2016 10:49, lmarion wrote:
>>
>> Another teaching moment: Check power supply is No 1 on every trouble shoot
>> chart.
>
>
> Or:  Check the simple stuff first.
>
> Now, why do I keep forgetting that?
>
> 73,
>
> Scott  K9MA
>
>
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