K2 manual suggestions

[Mike Markowski]

Now that my K2 is just about complete & while it's still fresh in my
mind, I thought I'd offer a couple suggestions that might make the
already fantastic manual possibly even a little friendlier.  These are
very, very minor, though.  The manual makes it incredibly easy to start
from a bag of parts and end up with a first rate rig.

-----

RECOMMENDATION: When winding toroids the manual indicates how long to
cut the wire.  It would be nice if it also mentioned approximately how
long a lead this assumes.

WHY: If you use too long a lead that's ok because you can start winding
from that one if you run short on the other end.  But if you start with
a shorter lead, like I did, you end up working extra hard to make tight
turns only to discover at the end that you had plenty of wire left over.
 But I did catch on after a few toroids!

-----

RECOMMENDTAION: It would similarly be nice if the manual mentioned when
you use the last piece of a given color or type of wire so that you know
the rest is now extra.

WHY: For example, when told to make links for the "binocular"
transformer I found myself reading ahead to see what wire was still to
be used to know which hookup wire would be safe to use for this.  Same
goes for the coax when making the RF probe.  I wasn't sure if more coax
would be used later, and so ended witing till the very end to finish the
probe.  It's also helpful to know how much extra you have so that when
you make a mistake, you have the info to know whether to cut a fresh
piece or conserve and work with what you've got.

-----

And for anyone ready to start building & wondering about winding
toroids, I had great luck using the "solder blob" method described in
the manual.  It's not as easy as a solder pot, but not that much harder
either.  I actually found winding the toroids to be a relaxing break
from the install & solder routine.

73,
Mike  AB3AP
Avondale, PA
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[Margaret Leber]

Mike Markowski wrote:
> It's also helpful to know how much extra you have so that when
> you make a mistake, you have the info to know whether to cut a fresh
> piece or conserve and work with what you've got.

Ain't that the truth.

Just before I succumbed to the flu last month my last act in building K2
1641 was to wind T7 and T6. In my foggy mental state I ended up
installing T7 in the location for T6, and didn't realize my error until
I went to install T6.

I got T7 out without damaging the board (I think), but had to cut the
red leads fairly close to the toroid, then downed-tools before I ended
up doing any more "negative work". I'm just now emerging from my
post-flu funk enough to want to resume work.

I may have to rewind T7. I'm not sure whether there's enough red 26ga
wire left to get away with that without reusing what's left of the 20" I
used on the first incarnation of T7 on one of the smaller LPF inductors
later on.

(The good news is Radio Shack has 26ga magnet wire. The bad news is it
comes in a pack of three gauges but the 26ga is only in one color. :-)

I suppose I should just suck it up and press on, and throw myself on the
mercy of "parts@elecraft" should I come up short.

(My experience so far has been that cutting the wire to the recommended
length leaves about three inches of extra wire when done winding.)

  73 de Maggie K3XS

--
-----/___.   _)Margaret Stephanie Leber CCP, SCJP/"The art of progress /
----/(, /|  /| http://voicenet.com/~maggie SCWCD/ is to preserve order/
---/   / | / |  _   _   _    `  _  AOPA 925383/ amid change and to  /
--/ ) /  |/  |_(_(_(_/_(_/__(__(/_      K3XS / preserve change amid/
-/ (_/   '        .-/ .-/        ARRL 39280 /order."-A.N.Whitehead/
/________________(_/_(_/_______AMSAT 32844_/<[hidden email]>/

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