Will K2 remain stable?

[Mike Geddes]

You have piqued my curiosity now!! Both seem to have left the door open for
K2 changes in the future!  Any hints???  :-)

"It will not be changing anytime soon." (Wayne)
"The K2 will stay in its present form for the foreseeable future." (Eric)

73,
Mike
N4JX



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[Ron D'Eau Claire-2]

Ha! It's relative. I have K2 S/N 1289 built in 2000. In my estimation the
design was stable then -- just as it is now. The rig has always worked just
as expected every time it was turned on.

What sets Elecraft apart from other companies is that they are always open
to ideas. Many of them come from questions and comments right here on the
reflector. Just a few examples include someone noticing that the K2 audio
gain controls seemed "noisy" at minimum gain after a while. That was traced
to the fact that the pots didn't maintain a solid "zero" resistance fully
CCW after ageing a bit. Instead of making owners replace the pot every year
or two, the audio gain control circuit was redesigned so a pot would
continue to work properly after long periods of service. Another was that
some ops noticed a significant frequency drift -- particularly up on 15
meters. The frequency might drift more than 100 Hz after a normal warm-up.
That led to improvements in both the BFO and PLL Reference oscillator (and
it's why there's a little "pony board" that mounts in the PLL circuit in the
current design). Someone else noticed that under the most rigorous
conditions imaginable, the K2 could be considered to be somewhat more
"clicky" with CW keying that it needed to be. It was something that only one
in a thousand would ever notice and certainly didn't rise to the level of a
"fault", but Elecraft redesigned the keying circuit to make the K2 among the
best of the best in minimum-bandwidth keying wave shape.

Those are just a couple of examples. I couldn't begin to list all the
improvements that have been made over the years. I trust that this evolution
will never stop. It may drop to very tiny changes. After all, the K2 design
has had nearly a decade of constant scrutiny and improvement by both the
Elecraft engineers and Hams using K2s on the air in all sorts of conditions.
Who knows what change might be next, but if there's a way to make it better,
experience shows that Wayne/Eric will look into ways to do so.

There's another important thing they've done that is unusual among equipment
suppliers. My old S/N 1289 is just as up-to-date as the latest K2 shipped!
All along the way Elecraft provided kits for existing owners to incorporate
into their existing rigs to keep them absolutely current with the newest
versions of the design. No one need have an "outdated" K2 in any sense of
the word, no matter how long they've had it.  

As the fictional detective 'Kojac' used to ask, "Who loves ya' baby?"

Ron AC7AC



-----Original Message-----
You have piqued my curiosity now!! Both seem to have left the door open for
K2 changes in the future!  Any hints???  :-)

"It will not be changing anytime soon." (Wayne)
"The K2 will stay in its present form for the foreseeable future." (Eric)

73,
Mike
N4JX


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Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com