K2 deaf

[Leslie Austin]

Folks,

i have an old K2, s/n 0505 which was built by a friend, then later sold
to me. It has started to go deaf. At first a tap on the key or paddle
would immediately restore it to normal, but its now getting to be noisy
most of the time and a struggle to hear signals at all sometimes.

I confess to feeling a little lost inside the rig (its more complicated
than my lovely little K1 for sure) but I have tried checking for dry
joints, and have been round as much as I could reach with a soldering
iron, though the guy who built it is a skilled home-brewer and he'd be
unlikely to have messed up like that. Besides the rig has worked well
for years, and started playing up in a mild way perhaps two years ago,
and just lately has got much worse.

Help!
Any suggestions to guide me would be appreciated.

Regards,
Les Austin g0nmd
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[Vic K2VCO]

Make sure that you have ruled out problems with coax connectors, baluns, etc. The 'tap on
the key fixes it' phenomenon is common when there is a poor connection in the antenna system.

On 11/13/2010 4:05 PM, Leslie Austin wrote:

> Folks,
>
> i have an old K2, s/n 0505 which was built by a friend, then later sold
> to me. It has started to go deaf. At first a tap on the key or paddle
> would immediately restore it to normal, but its now getting to be noisy
> most of the time and a struggle to hear signals at all sometimes.
>
> I confess to feeling a little lost inside the rig (its more complicated
> than my lovely little K1 for sure) but I have tried checking for dry
> joints, and have been round as much as I could reach with a soldering
> iron, though the guy who built it is a skilled home-brewer and he'd be
> unlikely to have messed up like that. Besides the rig has worked well
> for years, and started playing up in a mild way perhaps two years ago,
> and just lately has got much worse.
>
> Help!
> Any suggestions to guide me would be appreciated.
>
> Regards,
> Les Austin g0nmd

--
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco/
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[Don Wilhelm-4]

  Les.

Heed the sage advice of Vic who responded a few minutes ago.
That being said, those symptoms are typical of a poorly soldered
connection somewhere.

It would be helpful if you could get the antenna out of the picture and
replace it with a low level signal generator.  If it displays the same
behavior with the signal generator, then the problem is in the K2, but
if it does not, look at your antenna system for the solution.

Do you have the basic K2?  or the KAT2 option? or the KPA100? or the
KAT100.  There can be several pieces in the receive path, and any of
them are suspect until they have proven their worthiness.

If you do have multiple options, and you must use your antenna system
for evaluation, try connecting another transceiver to the antenna system
and see if you have the same failure - if not, then you can break down
the K2 to its basic configuration for troubleshooting - then add the
KAT2, KPA100, KAT100 one at a time until the failure occurs.  That will
tell you which piece of gear to examine in detail.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 11/13/2010 7:05 PM, Leslie Austin wrote:

> Folks,
>
> i have an old K2, s/n 0505 which was built by a friend, then later sold
> to me. It has started to go deaf. At first a tap on the key or paddle
> would immediately restore it to normal, but its now getting to be noisy
> most of the time and a struggle to hear signals at all sometimes.
>
> I confess to feeling a little lost inside the rig (its more complicated
> than my lovely little K1 for sure) but I have tried checking for dry
> joints, and have been round as much as I could reach with a soldering
> iron, though the guy who built it is a skilled home-brewer and he'd be
> unlikely to have messed up like that. Besides the rig has worked well
> for years, and started playing up in a mild way perhaps two years ago,
> and just lately has got much worse.
>

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