[Elecraft] Possible K3s TX failure - distorted audio

[Bill Johnson]

I did and sent in to factory to fix.
Bil
K9YEQ

Bill
920-421-1172

________________________________
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net <elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net> on behalf of Peter Dougherty (W2IRT) <lists at w2irt.net>
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2018 11:36:40 PM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Elecraft] Possible K3s TX failure - distorted audio

Hi all.
Early into CQWW this weekend I was getting reports of extremely distorted
audio from my K3s. Being mostly a CW (and 6m FT8) operator I wasn't sure
what was going on. I figured it was RF, but it was happening at all power
levels, from QRP to 100W, and QRO with my KPA-1500. Same (bad) audio, just
stronger/weaker signals. All bands were equally bad.

I ended up going from the radio directly to the tower, physically bypassing
the amp and tuner, and only running low power, with the same result. It
sounded more like distorted audio than RF ingress.

Some troubleshooting by Dave, WO2X, who is a Flex owner: He remoted in to
his Flex a few miles away and noticed my garbled signal was absolutely dirty
and wide, despite low mic gain and little or no compression. The audio
sounded clean through the monitor, so it wasn't the audio chain. He's
speculating I may have a blown FET in the PA stage.

We put in a Flex 6500 temporarily and it seems to be running fine. Wondering
if anybody here has had experience with this, and if so, what are my next
steps?

Thanks in advance.

---------------------------------------------
73 and Good DX
Peter, W2IRT

K3s S/N 10023


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