K1 problem

[wrmoore]

 I finished my K1 about a month or so ago and its been a joy to learn to use
it.  The last QSO was in the Fox Hunt Thursday night on 20m.  I bagged one,
but couldn't hear the other Fox.  I turned the rig on this morning for the
first time since then and 20m sounded very quiet.  I could only hear a
handful of signals and all of those, as well as the noise level, were way
down.  All the other bands sounded normal.  I tried the KAT2 to see if I
just had a bad match to the antenna.  I immediately noticed that the power
output during the tuning process showed 0.1w.  I connected to a dummy load
and checked the power output and sure enough it's 0.1 w no matter what I set
the power level to.  All the other bands (40m, 30m, and 15m) work fine.

Do these clues point to a place to start looking?  I suspect I'll find a bad
solder joint somewhere.  Should have know this might happen.  I have K2 #337
and have never had the slightest problem with it since I got it going.

73,
Randy, KS4L

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[Mike Morrow-3]

Randy wrote:

> ... 20m sounded very quiet.  I could only hear a handful of signals and
> all of those, as well as the noise level, were way down.

Randy, there have been a lot of reports of 20m hetrodyne crystal failures on the KFL1-4.  Can you hear a good strong 22 MHz (+/- 10 kHz) signal in another receiver (with antenna wire looped near the RF PCB) when 20m is selected on your K1?

See you at the Huntsville, AL, hamfest two weekends from now.

73,
Mike / KK5F
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[wrmoore]

Thanks for suggestions from several, both on and off the list.

With an ohm-meter, I checked that K2, K4 and K6 were in the correct state
with 20 selected, and they were.  I did a triple visual check of all the
20m-specific component solder joints on the filter board and they looked
fine.  But I re-heated all those joints anyway and voila!  It works again!!
So I guess one of those joints was marginal.  We'll see if this occurs
again.

By the way, I'm loving the K1, but not quite as much as my K2!

73,
Randy, KS4L

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