That's how I discovered it. Normally I can work anybody I hear, but at the start of WW I was working one in ten that I called in S&P, and after one long, difficult exchange I was told I sounded terrible.
The day before I'd been working a Dxpedition on CW and FT8 and no problem, until I started calling on 15m FT8. The op was begging, I was running over 1300W, signals were strong and I couldn't make a Q for love or money with 'em. I chalked it up to one-way propagation but I suspect that was about the time the failure occurred. I was feeding the KPA-1500 with whatever power it needed to get about 1300-1400W out. Likewise, for CQWW, I was doing the same. ---------------------------------------------------- Regards, Peter Dougherty, W2IRT DXCC Card Checker/CQ-WAZ Checkpoint www.facebook.com/W2IRT -----Original Message----- From: j...@kk9a.com [mailto:j...@kk9a.com] Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2018 2:04 PM To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net Cc: li...@w2irt.net Subject: re: [Elecraft] K3 Suddenly Putting Out Only 25 watts at 100 watts indicated It would be nice to know what conditions caused this FET failure. Is there an easy way to know when this failure occurs other than getting crappy audio reports? John KK9A Peter Dougherty (W2IRT) wrote: 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 ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@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 arch...@mail-archive.com
