[Elecraft] Mysterious intermittent failure possibly related to power supply?

[George Thornton]

I have been having some mostly transmission issues that I suspect might be related to the power supply.

The issue is intermittent failure of the K3 to generate full power on transmit.  It operated fine for an hour or two at Field Day but suddenly we were QRP on my k3/100.  No error messages, just would not deliver full power.

When I got home I was told to re-install firmware and calibrate transmitter.  Did that and everything worked fine again.

Yesterday while working on getting a new installation of PACTOR running I got an ERR DSE message which is solved by, again, re-installing firmware and DSP.  Again, it ran after the K3's software was refreshed.

>From what I have seen errors like this could be traced to erratic power supply issues.

My power supply is a 15 year old Astron RS-35M.  I adjusted the operating voltage up a bit as I am also using a PWRGate PG40s to mediate charging of some gel cell storage batteries.  I usually leave the Astron on all the time.

My K3 is currently wired direct to the Astron with heavier gauge wiring so I am getting power direct from the Astron with no mediation through batteries or the PWRGate.

Anybody have any thoughts to what might be going on?

I have a K3 in the 3900 serial number range, running latest (non-beta) firmware.  K3 has most of the bells and whistles including sub receiver and has been upgraded with the new synthesizers.