[K3] Bad COM port made K3 not work

[Carl Clawson]

I arrived at a friend's station for the 7th area QSO party at the crack of
dark yesterday morning and they were pulling hairs out over a misbehaving
K3. F/W V3.79. None of them knew the K3, whose owner hadn't arrived yet. It
had been working fine the previous evening as they were prepping for the
contest.

It would power up but as soon as you hit any button it would send a
continuous side tone. I don't know if it was actually transmitting but the
user interface would become mostly non responsive. You could turn it off
with the power button and that was about it. There was no ERR KEY or ERR PTT
display, so it doesn't seem like it was just a problem with the radio keying
up. We were using VOX and not the COM port for PTT, but I forget if VOX was
on. We couldn't have turned if off if it had been. There was one of the ERR
BP# codes showing because the CONFIG menu wrongly had the KPBF3 installed. I
don't know how that happened but I suspect someone got into the CONFIG menu
and did that by mistake. Likely that's an unrelated fact. Also, this was a
"real" COM port, not a USB adapter. There wasn't any radio control software
running on the PC, although N1MM had been running OK with the K3 earlier.

The Yaesu guy in the crowd loudly gloated that this was yet more evidence
that the K3 is a flaky radio. I tried to ignore him while I worked on it. I
unplugged it from its COM port and suddenly the radio was fine. Something
with the port was seriously disrupting the radio firmware. We proceeded to
use a different port.

No problem now, just a war story and something rather odd that I don't think
I've heard before. I'd be interested if anyone had a clue what might have
caused it. Details are sketchy and/or missing because I was doing this under
pressure to get up and running in the contest, with a Yaesu guy yelling in
my ear.

73, Carl WS7L
K3 #486




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[W8JI]

> caused it. Details are sketchy and/or missing because I
> was doing this under
> pressure to get up and running in the contest, with a
> Yaesu guy yelling in
> my ear.
>

Them darn Yaesu guys really hang in an exclusive group. You
should have asked him if you could join his little click.
:-)


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[Bill W4ZV]

W8JI wrote

> caused it. Details are sketchy and/or missing because I
> was doing this under
> pressure to get up and running in the contest, with a
> Yaesu guy yelling in
> my ear.
>

Them darn Yaesu guys really hang in an exclusive group. You
should have asked him if you could join his little click.
:-)

ROFL Tom!  For any who missed it...click = clique and is a wordplay on Yaesu's 15 year history of key clicks (FT-1000D thru Mark V).

73,  Bill

[lstavenhagen]

Pshaw - how about when the Yaesu goes flakey? Who You Gonna Call then? Our elecrafts are a package deal (you get a lot more than just the rig, you also get the support and responsiveness of elecraft).

Tho I did get to use an FT1000-D once some years ago and it was a very FB rig, IMO, both ergonomically and performance-wise. So credit does have to go where credit is due hi hi.

73,
LS
W5QD

[Jim Brown-10]

On Sun, 2 May 2010 17:30:00 -0700 (PDT), Bill W4ZV wrote:

>ROFL Tom!  For any who missed it...click = clique and is a wordplay on
>Yaesu's 15 year history of key clicks (FT-1000D thru Mark V).

Yes. Compare their 15 year failure to respond to REALLY BAD CLICKS with
Elecraft's prompt response to issues.

Yesterday on 20M during the NEQP, K2LE was only S9 here, but making
clicks. When I told him so, his response was that he'd been using that
radio for 10 years. I guess that made it OK.

73,

Jim K9YC


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[David Gilbert]

A little Google searching shows that K2LE uses FT-1000MP's at his station.

73,
Dave   AB7E



On 5/3/2010 9:28 AM, Jim Brown wrote:

> Yesterday on 20M during the NEQP, K2LE was only S9 here, but making
> clicks. When I told him so, his response was that he'd been using that
> radio for 10 years. I guess that made it OK.
>
> 73,
>
> Jim K9YC
>
>
>    

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[Guy, K2AV]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 3:03 PM, David Gilbert <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> A little Google searching shows that K2LE uses FT-1000MP's at his station.
>
> 73,
> Dave   AB7E
>
>
>
> On 5/3/2010 9:28 AM, Jim Brown wrote:
>> Yesterday on 20M during the NEQP, K2LE was only S9 here, but making
>> clicks. When I told him so, his response was that he'd been using that
>> radio for 10 years. I guess that made it OK.
>>
>> 73,
>>
>> Jim K9YC
>>
>>
>>
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>
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> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>

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