[Elecraft] Does the K3(S) need occasional realignment?

[Don Wilhelm]

Knut,

Do you have a power loss on some bands that is not cured with a TX Gain 
Calibration?
Have you measured the receiver MDS and found it to be lacking from the 
last time you measured it?

If the answer to both those questions is "NO", then the answer is that 
it does not need any alignment.

Older tube rigs may be a different matter, but modern components are not 
as prone to value changes with age as they were "back then".

This applies to any transceiver, and is not particular to the K3 or any 
other one transceiver.

I have serviced K1s and K2s K2s that I had fully aligned and calibrated 
several years before, and find them still in perfect alignment (although 
I do go through the alignment procedures on those I service again just 
as a check).

Unless you have adequate instrumentation, I would not attempt it.
It would be simpler to send your K3(S) back to Elecraft than to attempt 
it yourself - by the time you obtain adequate instrumentation, you will 
spend more money on the project than a trip to Elecraft.

Then you mention the other problem - lack of full instructions.  Those 
are not available for the K3(S).  Elecraft has automated testing lines 
set up to do that job.

73,
Don W3FPR



On 6/3/2018 4:53 PM, ab2tc wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Very recently there was the same question asked about the K1. I don't recall
> any mention of this topic on the K3 on the reflector. It has internal
> trimmers on the per ham band HF filter. Is it advisable to occasionally
> touch these up? I have no reason to believe that my oldest K3 (ser#82) is
> out of alignment, but I'd like to be ahead of the game. I am old enough to
> have used tube rigs in my early ham career and they definitely needed
> occasional tune up. The narrow band ham band RF filters in the K3 have
> relatively high Q so the slightest component drift will quickly affect the
> shape of the filter curve.
> 
> If the answer is affirmative, could we get a procedure for doing it
> properly? Tuning for max signal at the center frequency may not produce the
> proper shape of the bandpass filter (flat top for the required bandwidth). I
> know from my previous career as an RF engineer that tuning LC bandpass
> filters can be tricky.