It's dead, Jim.

My "first" KX3 during its early days at KG9DW.

I heard back from Elecraft yesterday, and my KX3 is officially toast. You see, it wasn't ever designed to have 120VAC applied to the external power connector. As I feared, the current transitioned through the control board, wiped out some components, traveled across the leads to the RF board, took out multiple components, and then exited through the well grounded antenna connection.

Talking through the options, fixing it is cost prohibitive. The guys at Elecraft are working on an option for me, so I'm hopeful I'll have a working KX3 back in the shack in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I've got a loaner radio from a buddy in the shack. It transmits fine but its receiver is so, so deaf compared to the KX3. It's like going from an iPad Air to a Palm Pilot.

In the comments of my last post about this mistake, the suggestion of fusing along with a diode was brought up. I'll definitely be putting more thought into my power supply cables after this costly error.

K1N is Busy

With my KX3 on the fritz (boxed up, ships out tomorrow) I won't be able to join in on the fun in chasing K1N on Navassa Island. But I did manage to sneak in some time this evening on K2SDR's internet enabled software defined radio station. Just listening to the CW pileup makes you wonder if you'll ever be good enough to pick them out of the pile! Here's a view of what 20M CW is like....K1N is the station on the left...the rest to the right are in the pile!

Magic Smoke

There's two ways I learn best - studying other people's mistakes, or making my own mistakes. Today I was the subject of the mistake. My Astron power supply has two meters on the front...one for voltage and one for amperage. I noticed a few weeks ago that the ammeter was reading way too high. I rechecked the voltage, and all was fine. My loads hadn't changed, and my other ammeter wasn't showing anything amiss. I cracked open the case and found the simple pot to adjust. Since I needed to put a load on the supply to set the ammeter I left the AC plugged in. Just as I was connecting up the load, I dropped a lead. Well crud, that wasn't a nice snap or crackle. I blew the AC fuse, which was quickly replaced. I went on with the procedure, buttoned everything back up, and went to check out the radios. Unfortunately it wasn't just a fuse that gave up its magic smoke. My Elecraft KX3 refused to power on. Sitting back a few minutes and thinking through what had happened, I realized I had just exposed my beloved radio to 120V across its DC input. I opened up the KX3 but didn't see anything obvious that I was up to servicing - but I did sniff the board and caught a whiff of magic smoke. A few google searches, a visit to the yahoo group, and the KX3 is packed in a box readied for a trip back to Elecraft. Another mistake, another learning opportunity. And did you know that magic smoke comes from $100 bills? It must, because that's what it costs when I have to have other people put it back in my radios.

Radio clubs or why hams shouldn't meet

You've probably heard of group think. It's what happens when you put a bunch of people together in a room and try to discuss an issue. Pretty soon all logic leaves and you're left with opinions, half-facts, fighting, chaos, cats and dogs living together.

I'm a member of a radio club that's one of the oldest in the state. In my 40's, I'm one of the youngest members. And boy, it tries my patience every time I attend a meeting. You see, my day job as an IT manager is all about not having meetings. Meetings are just about useless - you put 30 people in a room and you're guaranteed to not get anything accomplished. So all day long I solve complex problems by putting the right people together, usually without a meeting.

Now comes the fourth Wednesday of the month...time for the radio club meeting. After the typical reading of the minutes, treasurer report, and updates on our nearly non-existent ARES group comes discussion about the local repeater. It's been around since FM was invented, sits on 146.94 and at 200ft AGL on a high-point still only has about a 8 mile range. It is in terrible need of some TLC. But it isn't because of the RF deck...it's because the feedline is shot, the 20 bay antenna is broke in the middle, and no one wants to climb the tower. Not to mention, the owner of the tower has no other tenants and could decide to tear the thing down any day. So what are we talking about tonight? Buying a Yaesu Fusion machine.

This is when the engineer in me just about loses it. You've got a problem - poor repeater performance. And you know the cause - bad feedline and a broken antenna. So you decide to spend what limited funds you have on a new RF deck. Geez.

KB6NU once wrote (and I'm paraphrasing) that if you don't like the radio club you're in, start your own. I'm lucky enough to be in another club that meets virtually either on the air or over email. No big group-think meetings, great technical discussions, and a shared interest in new technologies. For all that ham radio gives us, meeting in a room with a bunch of hams is the last thing we should be doing. Swapping stories on the air, helping each other out, rallying to solve a problem, meeting for coffee...those are great things. Meeting just to meet because that's what we do every 4th Wednesday is not ham radio.

In the end, some wiser club members decide that spending the limited funds on Fusion isn't the right thing to do. Instead, they will solicit some donations on the side. Will that solve the performance problems? Nope, not in the least. But hey, that's not why this club meets.

St. Louis/Collinsville IL Winterfest 2015

I wasn't planning on going to a hamfest in January. Oh, I've thought long and hard about making the flight down to Orlando in February, but that's just not going to happen this year. You see, I'm one of those middle-aged ham radio operators that still has a day job to support my family AND my hobby! 

But my "buddy" Fred KC9REG convinced me that I just had to go to Collinsville this weekend.

So early this morning (4am!) I was up and getting out the door to meet Fred and two of our other co-hearts in crime as we took the 2.5 hour drive from Central Illinois down to just this side of St. Louis. And boy, was I glad I went! Winterfest is put on by the St. Louis & Suburban Radio Club and is proclaimed as the biggest, oldest, and most successful hamfest in the Midwest. All indoors in the Gateway Center, the fest offers a little bit of something for everyone. There were the typical vendors, lots of flea market tables, and displays by various organizations.

I spent some time at the Missouri Digital Group booth talking with George WB0IIS about their work with D-Star. We swapped stories and talked about the growth of this technology in both Missouri and Illinois. George had a working Icom stack on display. I showed them pictures of our homebrew repeaters to which they pointed out that in 2005 they didn't have access to the open source software and alternative hardware that we do today.

I escaped the fest with only a few minor purchases...some powerpoles, a speaker, a rocker switch for a project, and a $5 bread box sized vhf duplexer. Anyone that knows duplexers for VHF will tell you that you don't find them for $5. This one was a small unit that had been used for some Civil Air Patrol work. If nothing else, it will make a good enclosure for a random project.

All in all, it was a great adventure. I wouldn't be able to guess at attendance, but it was definitely worth the trip. Anytime you get to spend time with friends and get to make new ones is time well spent.