[Elecraft] [K3] Sub receiver intermittant failures

[hawley, charles j jr]

Maybe you could remove the sub and send it for evaluation somewhat economically 

Chuck Jack Hawley 
KE9UW

Sent from my iPhone, cjack 

> On Jun 10, 2020, at 12:59 PM, Ray Albers <rayalbers at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I bought my K3 used. It's now a bit over six years old (S/N 8240). The
> seller kindly included the manual, original invoice, a repair invoice and
> even the Fred Cady book. The K3 was factory assembled, with a
> factory-installed KRX3 subreceiver and the BNC auxiliary antenna connection.
> 
> If I had bought a new K3 or K3S I probably would not have bothered getting
> the subreceiver, but since I have it, I figured I may as well put it to
> some use. I don't chase DX but the notion of experimenting with diversity
> reception interested me. So I threw a chunk of wire over the roof and
> connected it to the BNC input. Admittedly not a really good diversity
> antenna (much too close to the main antenna, for one thing) but OK to play
> with.  When I found that the Carrier Operated Relay was operating as I sent
> CW, in order to protect the sub-receiver, I stopped until I could get and
> install an Array Solutions Receiver Front End Protector.
> 
> So I had many months of fun and even found that at times there was enough
> diversity between the antennas to help with reception in the face of fast
> QSB. And then suddenly the sub started failing.
> 
> I check it when turning the radio on, and often the sub is working but
> then after a while it stops. It doesn't seem to be correlated to
> transmitting, i.e., it may stop after I've been sending but not always and
> never right away. There has even been a time or two when it didn't work
> initially but then came back to life after a while. Often it will work on
> 20 and up but not on 80, 40, and 30.
> 
> I've opened the radio, taken the cover off the sub, and poked, wiggled and
> re-seated everything I could get my hands on. I've even tried this poking
> while the radio was powered up and the sub was quiet, to see if any poking
> could bring it to life. Nada.
> 
> I suppose at this point the "right" thing to do would be to send the radio
> to Elecraft and I may do that at some distant future point, but right now I
> feel that I don't want the sub badly enough to warrant the expense and time.
> 
> Of course if meanwhile anyone has a miracle cure to suggest, that'd be
> great!
> 
> Thanks for listening.
> 
> 73
> Ray K2HYD
> ______________________________________________________________
> 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 c-hawley at illinois.edu