K1 Board swap question

[Curron HILL]

I just purchased a nice used K1 with a 40 / 20 meter board in it.  I purchased from Elecraft a 4 band module and built it for 40/30/20/15.  It works great.  I also purchased the parts to rework the 40/20 board into a 40/80 board.   My night time bands are usually 80 and 40 and my day time bands are 40/30/20/15.  I have a couple of questions.

1. Once I complete the 40/80 board and align it in the receiver, how involved is it to swap the 4 band and the 2 band back and forth?  Do you just open the case, pull the tuner, pull the band board, put in the new one, and put everything back in, or do you have to do other steps?

2. Is there any plans to come up with a 5 band module that would allow the k1 to have 80/40/30/20/15, or even a four band that could include 80 as one of the bands?

Having to swap a board to get 80 is the only fault I can find with the K1.  Now that the KX1 is soon to have 80 could we maybe get the k1 on the list to have 80 with 3 other bands as well?

Thanks,  73 KB3DRW Don

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[Mike Morrow-3]

Don wrote:

>I purchased from Elecraft a 4 band module and built it for 40/30/20/15.
>I also purchased the parts to rework the 40/20 board into a 40/80 board.
>
>...how involved is it to swap the 4 band and the 2 band back and forth?

You'll want to replace the 20m parts on your 40/20m board with the 80m parts (plus you'll need to install RFC8 and C78 on the RF PCB for 80m operation).  This will minimize work, and leave 40m as band 1 on both of your filter boards.  That will keep you from having to re-assign band 1 after a board swap.

Removing/installing the KAT1 is simple if you take Tom's (NOSS) suggestion to cut strips from a small rubber band and thread the two KAT1 PCB spacer sleeves on the long KAT1 mounting screws with this rubber piece to hold the sleeves on the screws.

In addition to changing the filter board (the K1 will automatically detect whether it's a two-band or four-band board), you'll need to use the "bx" menu to re-assign b2 (band 2) to 80m when your 40/80m board is in place, or to re-assign b2 to 30m when your 40/30/20/15m board is in place.

The K1 can retain frequency display calibration data for *each* of the nine HF ham bands, but it can only retain *one* set of cal data *per HF ham band.*  You will have two boards using the same band (40m).  Unless the 40m heterodyne crystals on your two boards oscillate within about 50 Hz of each other, there will be a small frequency display error when the board which was not the last one calibrated for frequency is installed.  The error will be the difference in frequency between the two 40m crystals, and that could be several kHz.

I don't think that K1 board swaps are intended to be done *very* frequently.  IIRC, this is discussed in the manual somewhere.  Daily swaps will take a toll on RF, KFL, and KAT1 PCB board flexing (may lead to broken traces) and connector reliability.  I re-built my old two-band board for 80/17m, but I rarely remove the 40/30/20/15m board.

73,
Mike / KK5F
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