[K2] Kit Building Tips / Lessons Learned

[Bj Rollison]

First, let me start out by thanking the fine people at Elecraft for their
exceptional quality and expert service. I especially want to thank Gary
(AB7MY0) for his advice and patience in responding to my questions. I wish
the folks at Elecraft a very Happy New Year, and many continued years of
success!

Background...I bought a K2/10 at the Mike & Key swap meet last year. I used
it both QRP from parks and from my sailboat, and also took it and an RM
Italy HLA305V to operate in Vietnam last year. It had been many decades
since building a Heath kit with my father, so I decided to take advantage of
the Black Friday sale and order a k2/100 with all the trimmings (except
internal battery and atu). Now my K2/100 & KAT-100 are on the air, so I
thought I would share some things I learned along the way for others who are
about to embark on their K2 kits.

1. Get an ESD mat and wrist strap. They are not expensive and offer piece of
mind. Also a PanaVise to hold the printed circuit boards was nice set of
'extra hands.'

2. Use a good pair of flush cutters; not side cutters or dykes for clipping
leads. Esp. important on control board.

3. I used a Xytronic temp controlled soldering station with 3 different
tips: 1/16" for tight areas, 1/32" semi-chisel was most frequently used to
reduce dwell time, and 3/16" chisel for the heavy binocular toroid's. Adjust
heat setting accordingly to reduce dwell time.

4. A good, comfortable of head band magnifier is indispensable; esp. for
checking solder connections.

5. Get a small desk fan to blow flux fumes away from your face; especially
when prepping & tinning the toriods and transformer leads. I picked up the
O2Cool fan for $20 bucks at Staples. Runs off batteries, USB, or 5VDC pwr
supply.

6. Elecraft suggests doing a complete kit inventory before beginning. This
not only ensures you have all the parts, but it is also a great way to
catalog the parts to speed up the building process. Fortunately most
resistors were laid out in strips according to installment instructions.
Capacitors and other parts I laid out on paper and taped them down with 1/8"
masking tape in groups and labeled them by value, description number, and
schematic ref. number. In all honesty, I did not do with basic K2
transceiver kit. I spent many hours picking through the capacitors trying to
identify the right ones. For the filter kit, noise blanker, and amp...I use
this method and felt the day invested in separating and identifying
components was a good investment of time and sanity. BTW...Gary also sent me
this PDF for help identifying capacitors
(http://grathio.com/assets/capacitor_tags.pdf)

7. There are a couple of components (eg. C46) installed by soldering the
lead to the pad with a blob of solder. Read head to identify all components
installed this way. Instead of flush cutting the leads of the components
(e.g. Q8 and R21 in the case of C46), cut those leads to about 1/8" to
provide a better and cleaner looking connection, and cut as close as
possible afterwards.

8. Inspect each solder connection after clipping the lead, or after each
component. I missed soldering one connection on a resistor pack which led to
some bizarre behavior during initial tests. It freaked me out to have such a
simple mistake so early on in the project. I slowed down, and diligently
verified each solder connection after that for my own piece of mind.

8. During the VCO alignment procedure I could not get the max voltage above
4 vdc. Once again Gary came to the rescue and suggested squeezing the red
windings of T5 a bit. That did the trick! I wish that were annotated in the
manual.

9. Take your time. I took a 30 break at least every 2 hours, and didn't
spend more than 8 hours per day on the kit, not including reading ahead in
the manual or researching various web sites for BFO alignment tips and
things like that. While I wanted to get my K2 on the air...it was much more
important to build the kit correctly (esp. after that resistor pack incident
early on). All in all, it took about 3 weeks given a few days off for the
holidays.

10. Have an independent, well-lit workspace. I setup a collapsible 24"x48"
table in the corner of my shack. It was nice not to have to put things away
and restart, but it was also important to keep things nice and tidy at the
end of the day.

There are probably some other things I am forgetting, but this was a fun
project. I took my time,  learned a lot, and I am now on the air. The
K2/100, KAT100, and W2 will now be my primary rig when operating from
Vietnam, is also likely to replace my Icom M710 aboard my sailboat, and a
second radio in the shack.

Hope to catch you on the air.
BJ
WA7WJR
XV9WJR




-----
Thanks
   Bj
WA7WJR
XV9WJR
--
Sent from: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/
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