De-lurking and K1 questions

[Stephanie Maks]

Hello everyone,

I'm relatively new to the world of Elecraft kits - I finished  
building my K1 (# 02132) two weeks ago.  I've also been listening in  
on the various discussions here on the reflector for the last 10 days  
or so.

I've got the 4-band filter board in my K1, and also a 2-band board.  
The 4-band board works great, I was able to tune it up properly and  
have been listening all over 40 Meters and 20 Meters.  I haven't done  
any transmitting yet, I'm a bit key-shy so far, and my CW is very  
rusty.  I got my 12wpm endorsement about 7 or 8 years ago, and  
haven't used it since.  That's why I got the K1 actually, I wanted to  
get my CW back up to speed, and get on HF, so I figured it would be a  
great way to do both.  So for now, I'm just doing a lot of listening,  
to improve my copying speed.

So far, I'm loving the K1.  It was a blast to build, and seems to do  
a great job pulling in the signals.  I've got about 90 feet of wire  
strung up in the backyard, which seems to work great.  With the  
internal ATU, the K1 can tune it up to under 2:1 on 40 through 15  
meters.

I just finished building the 2-band filter board, which I've  
configured for 80 Meters and 10 Meters.  The 80M side seems to work  
just fine so far.  I've finished all the tests and everything looks  
good.  On 10M though, I can't get any output.  The receive function  
seems to work ok (aligned with XG-2 on 1st harmonic of 14.060 MHz).  
No matter what I try though, I can't get a milliwatt of power out  
when transmitting.

I know the K1 is not officially rated for 10 Meters but I did some  
searches in the reflector archives and saw that there had been talk  
of 10M (also 160M) a few times in the past.  Plus, the K1's firmware  
allows for 28MHz so it's got to be doable, right? :-)

I've checked the troubleshooting section of the manual and the tips  
in there under "Power output is low or zero" seem to all assume that  
the problem covers all the bands, whereas I have normal transmit on  
all bands except the highest one.

Does anyone know if the final stages on the RF board are tweaked or  
set up to prohibit or prevent 10 meter operation?  If anyone can give  
me some pointers or tips on tweaking the K1 to get output on 10  
meters, I'd really appreciate it.

I know it's highly unlikely but my ideal configuration for the K1  
would be a four-band filter board that had 80, 40, 20, and 10  
meters.  I couldn't use the existing 4-band board since it uses  
shared low-pass filters and I'd need four separate filters, but  
everything else on the board should be usable.  If I get really  
ambitious I might still have a go at it -- if I can get the 10M band  
working on the 2-band board.  The way I'd do it is to expand the low-
pass area of the filter board, make it a bit wider.  The noise-
blanker option would no longer fit, but with the addition of one or  
two more latching relays and another square inch or two of circuit  
board, there'd be enough room for four discrete low pass filters.  
The ATU would still fit too, so the only sacrifice would be the noise  
blanker option.  (Actually if the expanded filter board was laid out  
just right, it could incorporate the noise blanker circuitry and plug  
into all four 8-pin headers...sort of an all-in-one solution - but  
that's way more ambitious than me.)

Anyhow, thanks in advance for any suggestions or info!

Have a great weekend, and happy holidays to everyone!

73 de
Stephanie Maks
VA3UXB
Brampton, Ontario
Canada
www.felesmagus.com


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