Re: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In
John King wrote: I'm sorry to hear about your failure at FD. I have heard no other reports of FD failures, and to my knowledge the VP6DX crew had no failures during their operation earlier this year. It may be of small comfort to you, but I regard your failure as an anomaly - stuff happens. Overall, the K3 is establishing a reputation as a very reliable field rig. After 22-1/2 hours of FD operation my K3 failed also. Power output dropped to 1W no matter what the setting was (if above 12W). So I guess at least 2 failed during FD. So mine is on its way back to Aptos as soon as I can get an RSA number. Philip ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
RE: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In
Did you get a reduction in RX sensitivity? What happens if you try to do a tune when set to 5.0 watts? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Philip Leonard WVØT Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 11:11 AM To: Elecraft Reflector Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In John King wrote: I'm sorry to hear about your failure at FD. I have heard no other reports of FD failures, and to my knowledge the VP6DX crew had no failures during their operation earlier this year. It may be of small comfort to you, but I regard your failure as an anomaly - stuff happens. Overall, the K3 is establishing a reputation as a very reliable field rig. After 22-1/2 hours of FD operation my K3 failed also. Power output dropped to 1W no matter what the setting was (if above 12W). So I guess at least 2 failed during FD. So mine is on its way back to Aptos as soon as I can get an RSA number. Philip ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
[Elecraft] K3 Burn In
Has anyone done a burn in on their radios to test? They rate to 100W 100% duty cycle for 10 minutes. I'm sure there is quite a bit of headroom in that too. Has anyone tested to that? Do any of the Elecraft guys object to that type of testing? I had a strange failure at FD this year and worry that unless I do a burn in like that once it gets back that my normal amount of operation will take quite a while to emulate what the rig saw during field day. I'm assuming that the PA won't let you go till things are too hot and it will protect if things get a little too hot under the collar. Is there any sort of permanent damage that can occur by doing this type of testing? I just want to be sure that I end up with a radio that I can spend some time with and get ALL the options into over time. Other than my K1 this will be the first HF rig I've personally owned. I'd really like it to last me a long time. During the week I owned it I REALLY loved the thing! Now going back to the K1 I really miss the K3! :) Don't get me wrong I LOVE my K1 but its no K3! :) If there are any tests I should do other than trying to measure MDS with my XG2 and trying to do some key down tests to try and prove out that I have no issues please let me know. ~Brett (KC7OTG) ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
Re: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In
Brett Howard wrote: Has anyone done a burn in on their radios to test? They rate to 100W 100% duty cycle for 10 minutes. I'm sure there is quite a bit of headroom in that too. Has anyone tested to that? Do any of the Elecraft guys object to that type of testing? I had a strange failure at FD this year and worry that unless I do a burn in like that once it gets back that my normal amount of operation will take quite a while to emulate what the rig saw during field day. I'm assuming that the PA won't let you go till things are too hot and it will protect if things get a little too hot under the collar. Is there any sort of permanent damage that can occur by doing this type of testing? I just want to be sure that I end up with a radio that I can spend some time with and get ALL the options into over time. Other than my K1 this will be the first HF rig I've personally owned. I'd really like it to last me a long time. During the week I owned it I REALLY loved the thing! Now going back to the K1 I really miss the K3! :) Don't get me wrong I LOVE my K1 but its no K3! :) If there are any tests I should do other than trying to measure MDS with my XG2 and trying to do some key down tests to try and prove out that I have no issues please let me know. Hmm. When you buy a new car, do you drive it into a wall to test the airbags work? Even if the K3 survives the test, you will have subjected it to more stress than if you hadn't done the test. That is more likely to make failure occur sooner rather than later. - Julian, G4ILO K3 s/n: 222 K2 s/n: 392 G4ILO's Shack: www.g4ilo.com KComm for K2/K3: www.g4ilo.com/kcomm.html -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/K3-Burn-In-tp18277182p18277895.html Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
RE: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In
Disclaimer - the following test method is not approved or sanctioned by Elecraft. Conduct any testing at your own risk. I work in Quality Assurance in my day job (30 years and counting.) Long before FD I performed a 24 hour endurance test on my K3 to approximate worst-case FD conditions. I recorded a CQ FD message similar to the actual message we would be using at FD into one of the K3's message memories, then set the message repeat time to minimum. The K3's output power was set to 120 Watts and the rig was connected to a 50 ohm dummy load with a Bird thruline wattmeter in line. The DC input voltage was set to 13.5 volts. The test was performed at ambient room temp, about 24 degrees C. The K3 sent the continuous message loop for a 24 hour period without incident. The actual environmental conditions at our FD were a bit more severe than the test conditions above. The K3 was operated in a 4-man dome tent exposed to full sun with an outside air temp approaching 90 degrees. We didn't measure the actual temperature inside the tent, but my informal assessment was hot as hell. Of course, the transmit duty cycle in actual FD use was less demanding than the test duty cycle. I had high confidence that the K3 would be up to the task, and it was. I'm sorry to hear about your failure at FD. I have heard no other reports of FD failures, and to my knowledge the VP6DX crew had no failures during their operation earlier this year. It may be of small comfort to you, but I regard your failure as an anomaly - stuff happens. Overall, the K3 is establishing a reputation as a very reliable field rig. 73, john WA1ABI Has anyone done a burn in on their radios to test? They rate to 100W 100% duty cycle for 10 minutes. I'm sure there is quite a bit of headroom in that too. Has anyone tested to that? Do any of the Elecraft guys object to that type of testing? I had a strange failure at FD this year and worry that unless I do a burn in like that once it gets back that my normal amount of operation will take quite a while to emulate what the rig saw during field day. ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
Re: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In
Folks, John was quite correct to term his test an 'Endurance Test'. I have worked as an Assurrance Engineer for the latter part of my career and would like to offer the following: The purpose of any 'burn-in' tests for complete electronic assemblies I have encountered is *not* to stress the DUT to its limits, but simply to catch any early life failures that may be lurking. Burn-in testing of individual devices is different than any burn-in of a complete assembly. Simply running the assembly continuously under normal conditions for a period of time is normally sufficient. Early life failures can and do occur, but they are not common. If one would want to do a 'burn-in' for the K3, I would advocate that alternate receive and transmit cycles be done over a period of a several days (half max power level should be sufficient) or so (you get to pick the time frame that *you* define as 'early life'). Other than catching early life failures, a burn-in period for electronic packages such as the K3 serve no purpose at all. The continuous operation just makes a lurking early failure happen sooner than it would normally. If you are expecting anything more from such a test, it just ain't gonna happen. Of course, one can always just operate it as normal for the first 30 to 90 days and regard any failure that occurs as an early life failure - that works just as well as continuous operation. We did hear of one K3 that failed during Field Day, but there are over 1000 K3s out there, and an early life failure rate of less than 0.1% is very good, even though it is quite disconcerting to find oneself in that small percentage region. 73, Don W3FPR John King wrote: Disclaimer - the following test method is not approved or sanctioned by Elecraft. Conduct any testing at your own risk. I work in Quality Assurance in my day job (30 years and counting.) Long before FD I performed a 24 hour endurance test on my K3 to approximate worst-case FD conditions. I recorded a CQ FD message similar to the actual message we would be using at FD into one of the K3's message memories, then set the message repeat time to minimum. The K3's output power was set to 120 Watts and the rig was connected to a 50 ohm dummy load with a Bird thruline wattmeter in line. The DC input voltage was set to 13.5 volts. The test was performed at ambient room temp, about 24 degrees C. The K3 sent the continuous message loop for a 24 hour period without incident. The actual environmental conditions at our FD were a bit more severe than the test conditions above. The K3 was operated in a 4-man dome tent exposed to full sun with an outside air temp approaching 90 degrees. We didn't measure the actual temperature inside the tent, but my informal assessment was hot as hell. Of course, the transmit duty cycle in actual FD use was less demanding than the test duty cycle. I had high confidence that the K3 would be up to the task, and it was. I'm sorry to hear about your failure at FD. I have heard no other reports of FD failures, and to my knowledge the VP6DX crew had no failures during their operation earlier this year. It may be of small comfort to you, but I regard your failure as an anomaly - stuff happens. Overall, the K3 is establishing a reputation as a very reliable field rig. ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
RE: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In
I agree that sounds like a pretty good test. The K3 is a PHENOMENAL radio and I'm very familiar with things breaking in their infancy. I'm just hoping that the kinks are very well buried when it comes back. Appreciate the tips on what you did On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 09:25 -0400, John King wrote: Disclaimer - the following test method is not approved or sanctioned by Elecraft. Conduct any testing at your own risk. I work in Quality Assurance in my day job (30 years and counting.) Long before FD I performed a 24 hour endurance test on my K3 to approximate worst-case FD conditions. I recorded a CQ FD message similar to the actual message we would be using at FD into one of the K3's message memories, then set the message repeat time to minimum. The K3's output power was set to 120 Watts and the rig was connected to a 50 ohm dummy load with a Bird thruline wattmeter in line. The DC input voltage was set to 13.5 volts. The test was performed at ambient room temp, about 24 degrees C. The K3 sent the continuous message loop for a 24 hour period without incident. The actual environmental conditions at our FD were a bit more severe than the test conditions above. The K3 was operated in a 4-man dome tent exposed to full sun with an outside air temp approaching 90 degrees. We didn't measure the actual temperature inside the tent, but my informal assessment was hot as hell. Of course, the transmit duty cycle in actual FD use was less demanding than the test duty cycle. I had high confidence that the K3 would be up to the task, and it was. I'm sorry to hear about your failure at FD. I have heard no other reports of FD failures, and to my knowledge the VP6DX crew had no failures during their operation earlier this year. It may be of small comfort to you, but I regard your failure as an anomaly - stuff happens. Overall, the K3 is establishing a reputation as a very reliable field rig. 73, john WA1ABI Has anyone done a burn in on their radios to test? They rate to 100W 100% duty cycle for 10 minutes. I'm sure there is quite a bit of headroom in that too. Has anyone tested to that? Do any of the Elecraft guys object to that type of testing? I had a strange failure at FD this year and worry that unless I do a burn in like that once it gets back that my normal amount of operation will take quite a while to emulate what the rig saw during field day. ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
Re: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In
Totally agree. I was somewhat appreciative that FD helped me find the problem as soon as possible and was wondering if solid type TX would be a good way to do an accelerated test. From what I'm hearing now and I agree a FD simulation w/ full QSK running is probably more real world. You are correct in that all I really want to do is find any underlying problems quickly so that I can be assured that I'm out of the 0.1%. From reading the list I know that the K3 is a brute and they just flat out don't die! I just wanna make sure that after getting one that did that I've chased out all the demons... :) ~Brett On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 10:08 -0400, Don Wilhelm wrote: Folks, John was quite correct to term his test an 'Endurance Test'. I have worked as an Assurrance Engineer for the latter part of my career and would like to offer the following: The purpose of any 'burn-in' tests for complete electronic assemblies I have encountered is *not* to stress the DUT to its limits, but simply to catch any early life failures that may be lurking. Burn-in testing of individual devices is different than any burn-in of a complete assembly. Simply running the assembly continuously under normal conditions for a period of time is normally sufficient. Early life failures can and do occur, but they are not common. If one would want to do a 'burn-in' for the K3, I would advocate that alternate receive and transmit cycles be done over a period of a several days (half max power level should be sufficient) or so (you get to pick the time frame that *you* define as 'early life'). Other than catching early life failures, a burn-in period for electronic packages such as the K3 serve no purpose at all. The continuous operation just makes a lurking early failure happen sooner than it would normally. If you are expecting anything more from such a test, it just ain't gonna happen. Of course, one can always just operate it as normal for the first 30 to 90 days and regard any failure that occurs as an early life failure - that works just as well as continuous operation. We did hear of one K3 that failed during Field Day, but there are over 1000 K3s out there, and an early life failure rate of less than 0.1% is very good, even though it is quite disconcerting to find oneself in that small percentage region. 73, Don W3FPR John King wrote: Disclaimer - the following test method is not approved or sanctioned by Elecraft. Conduct any testing at your own risk. I work in Quality Assurance in my day job (30 years and counting.) Long before FD I performed a 24 hour endurance test on my K3 to approximate worst-case FD conditions. I recorded a CQ FD message similar to the actual message we would be using at FD into one of the K3's message memories, then set the message repeat time to minimum. The K3's output power was set to 120 Watts and the rig was connected to a 50 ohm dummy load with a Bird thruline wattmeter in line. The DC input voltage was set to 13.5 volts. The test was performed at ambient room temp, about 24 degrees C. The K3 sent the continuous message loop for a 24 hour period without incident. The actual environmental conditions at our FD were a bit more severe than the test conditions above. The K3 was operated in a 4-man dome tent exposed to full sun with an outside air temp approaching 90 degrees. We didn't measure the actual temperature inside the tent, but my informal assessment was hot as hell. Of course, the transmit duty cycle in actual FD use was less demanding than the test duty cycle. I had high confidence that the K3 would be up to the task, and it was. I'm sorry to hear about your failure at FD. I have heard no other reports of FD failures, and to my knowledge the VP6DX crew had no failures during their operation earlier this year. It may be of small comfort to you, but I regard your failure as an anomaly - stuff happens. Overall, the K3 is establishing a reputation as a very reliable field rig. ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
Re: [Elecraft] K3 Burn In
Brett, If it was working before the failure, one should always assume a single failure. Multiple failures are quite rare and are normally induced by some outside force (incorrect power, lightning surge, etc.) There are instances where one failed component will take out another one, but that is rare too if the designer did his job right. In any case, it is all a matter of probability, but no matter how low the probability of a failure is, remember that is calculated on a large sample size. If you have only a single unit, the probability of failure for that one unit is either zero percent or it is 100 percent - there is just no other way to calculate for a sample size of 1. 73, Don W3FPR Brett Howard wrote: Totally agree. I was somewhat appreciative that FD helped me find the problem as soon as possible and was wondering if solid type TX would be a good way to do an accelerated test. From what I'm hearing now and I agree a FD simulation w/ full QSK running is probably more real world. You are correct in that all I really want to do is find any underlying problems quickly so that I can be assured that I'm out of the 0.1%. From reading the list I know that the K3 is a brute and they just flat out don't die! I just wanna make sure that after getting one that did that I've chased out all the demons... :) ~Brett ___ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
