Wednesday 5 December 2012

KX3 Maintenance

Time to take the KX3 apart and address a couple of issues

I finally got hold of the KXBC3 Battery charger/Real time clock that was ordered Dec 28 2011 (11 months!). Took about 30 minutes to fit. Now I do not have to take the batteries out of the case to recharge them, but there is enough backup power on the board for the clock to remember the time for up to 5 minutes if the batteries are taken out.

While it was apart I took out the RF board to do the upgrade to take care of the lower dynamic range on 80/160m that was identified in the ARRL QST KX3 review. This involves removing 4 surface mount Inductors and replacing them with different values. The Inductors cost under $1 from Mouser Electronics. The modification took just 30 minutes. For the squeamish you can get Elecraft to do the changes for you  for $50 plus shipping each way as they consider it an "improvement" not a "defect correction"

Next I will do the extended temperature frequency calibration procedure to see if I can make it work on HF QRSS/WSPR without drifting. Fortunately this has to be done with the covers on

1 comment:

  1. Great to hear you had received your KXBC3 I am still waiting....serial number 1990!! Oh well.
    Mike

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