[Elecraft] K3 Suddenly Putting Out Only 25 watts at 100 watts indicated

[Peter Dougherty (W2IRT)]

This happened to me at the start of CQWW-SSB in October. My K3s is finally enroute back home after a 6 week stay in the Elecraft Repair Department with a blown FET in the HPA, cause unknown. And I know I've been told I'm not the only one to suffer this failure, and it sounds like this is now a known issue. 

Does anybody have an idea as to what could be causing these FETs to fail, or steps to consider to lessen the chances of it happening? I can't speak for anybody else, but I baby the heck out of my gear and was shocked to discover it failed, when feeding directly into a KPA-1500.

----------------------------------------------------
Regards,
Peter Dougherty, W2IRT

-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Wes Stewart
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2018 4:55 PM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 Suddenly Putting Out Only 25 watts at 100 watts indicated

If you have another receiver, run a two-test and listen to the K3 output in a 
narrow BW.  Ideally, the two tones will be considerably stronger than the first 
pair of sidebands.

I suspect they won't be, you'll have a lot more than two and you have a blown 
FET in the HPA.

Wes  N7WS


On 12/12/2018 12:47 PM, N4ZR wrote:
> Transmitted on my K3 for the first time since the 10-meter contest, and it is 
> only showing 25 watts out on the built-in meter into a dummy load. Power 
> output setting of the K3 is 100W, and same results seen on all bands. What 
> could possibly be going on here?  Back to Watsonville?
>
> The cruel karma of it all is that *yesterday* I ordered a KPA-1500.
>

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:Elecraft at mailman.qth.net

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to lists at w2irt.net