Last night I was at my girlfriend's house and I'd assembled a dipole I made from a pair of short multi band radials from a Butternut made of 300 ohm ribbon line. I placed this around the corners of the living room and was looking for the source of RFI in her house (turned out to be her APEX TV set even when turned off).
Though the dipole is resonant on 40M I used the K3 tuner to adjust for 80M. It settled on a 1.6-1 adjustment. I had just moved the new Astron VS-35M PS and must have bumped the crowbar control in that the power to the K3 went out when I started transmitting with a few dits. The voltage on the PS showed zero but the lights were on. I restarted the PS and the voltage went back to normal. I discovered the overcurrent was set very low (it was set for about 5 amps max) and restoring the current setting to the proper location got everything working again. But... before the crowbar tripped I could swear I noticed a glow on the KAT3 through the ventilation slots on the top panel & the color was about the same yellow as the LED on the RF board. As there is the shielding around the RF deck from the KPA3, this could not have been light reflected from that diode. The glow looked to be from right about where the sockets for the coax wires attach but on the inside of the ATU. I didn't notice that earlier or after but it did catch my attention just before the power supply cut off. It was New Year's Eve but I hadn't hit the EggNog yet so I'm wondering if there's an issue, something expected or if this was caused by an undigested bit of gruel? The PA seems to be fine as does the KAT3. Are there any checks I might do to see if an error ode of any kind is present? Nothing shows on the display. All seems normal but that localized yellow glow has me wondering. Thanks, Gary KA1J P.S. Happy New Year to everyone! _______________________________________________ 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
