[Elecraft] OT: The Great KPA Fan Mystery

[Andy Durbin]

I don't think anyone was proposing taking on a new cooling design for the KPA500.  The heat sink is there.  The conduction path between the finals and the heat sink is what it is.  The fan is selected and the fan speed temperatures are defined.  The only speculation is whether the flow direction is optimum.  Elecraft says it is.

I have over a year's worth of temperature data logged for my KPA500.  My logger records, along with many other KPA500 parameters, the finals temperature, heat sink fin temperature, and Z bracket temperature, once per second for every transmission.  I doubt anyone has a better set of temperature data for a KPA500.

If I decide to reverse the fan, I do have a good baseline data set against which to evaluate the change.  However, the real reason for logging the temperatures was to establish a baseline against which to evaluate any mechanical changes made in an attempt to eliminate the annoying thermal clicks.

73,
Andy, k3wyc