29 July 1999: It's Here! It's Here!
I got an email on Tuesday, 27 May 1999 from the good folks at Elecraft saying
that my K2 kit would be shipping "today or tomorrow." I was almost resigned
to the fact that my kit would not arrive until the following Monday, allowing
for the thing to be put into UPS on Weds and a normal 3-day delivery time.
But imagine my delight on Thursday, 29 May when I came home and found a USPS
Priority Mail package waiting for me at 6pm.
It was Christmas in July at the KC5ZYC homestead. The wrapping was torn off
within seconds but I had the presence of mind to start reading the manual and
errata sheets first. I carefully read through the errata sheets and corrected
the instructions. I had a few other things to do, but sometime around 7pm
(having completely forgotten about the trifling matter of eating dinner) I
began the laborious task of the full inventory. There are many, many parts to
the K2, all neatly divided into bags for the various boards.
Peeve: Not that this has anything to do with this kit, but what
blown-brain decided to make resistors labeled with color bands that
are so close in color? I mean, violet and black and brown all look
kinda the same when they're on really, really, REALLY small resistors.
With the aid of a magnifying glass, however, I was able to sort and
count all of the resistors in the kit. Yeesh. The caps were a bear
without the magnifying glass, too. Sigh. I'm not supposed to feel
old at my age.
Finished the inventory at about 9pm --- I got a phone call in the middle and
that slowed me down, but not much: the person at the end of the line had to
endure hearing me count large numbers of red monolithic caps in between
thoughts.
I hadn't planned to start melting solder tonight, but I did anyway. Started
stuffing the control board at 9:30.
The control board is complete at midnight. I decide that this is a good
night's work, but spend an hour decompressing in front of the idiot box. At
about 1am, however, I hear the siren's call of the little bags of parts saying
"assemble me! assemble me!" Since I hadn't taken the precaution of stopping
my ears and having the crew tie me to the mast I am powerless to resist.
At 6:30am, just as the sun is brightening the sky, I pry my eyes from the
nearly-complete front panel board and say "Enough!" I'm at a point where I
need to install the optical coupler for the VFO control, and it involves
wrapping bare wires around tiny posts. I'll save it for when I can actually
keep my eyes opened and focused.
30 July 1999:
I have the day off today, and am able to sleep in 'till 9:30, when my YL shows
up for coffee and emergency car repairs. I am not able to return to the rig
until after lunch, but I do get the front panel completed. A few resistance
checks and one bad solder joint later both the control and front panel boards
are checked out and happy.
31 July 1999
Began stuffing the RF board today. Only have a few hours to work on it, as
the YL is moving into a new house and I am helping move appliances. I only
get the latching relays installed.
1 August 1999
Finished the Part I RF board assembly and put the whole thing together for the
Part I testing. The machine powers up and I take the controls through what
little features are available at this point. The function counter works, the
displays work, and I can calibrate the S-meter. WHEE!
Late tonight I begin stuffing the Part II (40M/Rcvr) RF board
components. I get the resistors, diodes and varactor diodes installed before
I peter out for the weekend.
2 August 1999
Once again the siren's call catches me after work at about 7. I
finish stuffing the Part II assembly at about 2am. I spend the next
two hours trying to figure out why I can't hear signals or even any
atmospheric noise when I connect my cheesy MFJ-1621 vertical antenna.
Instead of concluding that it's the antenna and trying a different one
(I have a 30m dipole, but it hadn't occured to me to use to receive on
40m), I conclude I have a problem in the low-pass or band-pass filters
for 40m and resign myself to a night's signal tracing tomorrow.
3 August 1999
I pick up the pieces parts for the crystal oscillator I will need to
do my signal tracing at a surplus store for a total of $4.50, plus a
bunch of garbage at Radio Shack to make it a finished product
(enclosure, perfboard, jacks, etc.) In the end I don't use any of the
latter and just build the oscillator to work not to look pretty.
Immediately I discover that the 6.912MHz signal is coming right
through and I can align the receiver Just Fine without doing any
signal tracing. The light comes on, and I try to hook up my 30m
dipole. Within seconds I am hearing some morse code QSOs, and a
little while later I'm picking up SSB phone.
Since the receiver works after all, I started the Part III assembly at
about 8:30 tonight. I stopped at 11:30, having gotten to the part
where I need to wind toroids --- that'll take a while, and I'm not
going to start that tonight.
4 August 1999
WOund all the toroids, wound the transformers, installed the power amp
transistors and the heatsink. And then... ON TO FINAL ALIGNMENT!
Aligned all of the transmitter pieces and it's putting out power on all
bands through my dummy load. But it's two am, and it's time to quit
for the night and not hook it up to an antenna for a real on-the-air
test just yet.
Oh, and I noticed the backlight isn't working. Gonna have to look at the front
panel board and see if the backlight diffuser is put in properly. Yeesh.
But on the whole, the RIG IS DONE and #398 will be on the air
tomorrow!
9 August 1999
No, it wasn't on the air on 5
August, nor on 6, 7 or 8 August. My supposedly "tuned" 30m dipole was
tuned using an SWR meter that didn't calibrate at 2W with my SST ---
so I was basically guessing at the SWR on it. After a few quick,
useless attempts to improve it I gave up on the 5th. THen I went
camping, and didn't get to operate. But tonight I tore apart the 30m
dipole, tuned it (almost) for 20m and started listening near the QRP
calling frequency. Returned the first CQ I heard and K3DEN and I had
a painful QSO at 3:30UTC --- the QSB was bad and he had a real hard
time copying me. I could copy him but only sporadically, so we just
exchanged calls and RST. I got his QTH but I don't think he got mine.
Still, a 1700 mile contact with 2W on the first try during the time
when 20m was supposed to be closed on that path? I'm happy. I wasn't
able to raise anyone else tonight. I know that my quickly tuned 20m
dipole isn't very good, and I'll work more on it tomorrow. It was
getting dark as I got the thing down below 3:1 SWR.