Mychael Morohovich, AA3WF, provides a toroid winding service which I took advantage of, the little manilla envelopes contain a complete set of toroids for the K1.
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| Only good things can be said about the job that Elecraft is doing with the quality of the kits they are turning out! Fit, finish and stlying are superb, quality components are used and , as you will see in the pictures, the engineering that has gone into making a kit that is rugged, easy to assemble and attractive is second to none. The first picture shows the contents of the box from Elecraft. I bought the K1-4, noise blanker, antenna tuner and (just out of the picture to the right) the internal battery holder. |
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| A careful inventory of all of the parts is recommended in the Elecraft manual. In the method
that I chose to use, all of the loose components are stuck in the foam and their individual id's are
written beside them. That extra step was well worth doing! A few of those tiny components were hard
for my old eyes to i.d. and the extra trouble headed off mistakes that would have come later. Mychael Morohovich, AA3WF, provides a toroid winding service which I took advantage of, the little manilla envelopes contain a complete set of toroids for the K1. |
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| With the top off, from the front, you can see three of the five circuit boards. The large board on the bottom is the RF board. The small board on the next level in the right front corner is the noise blanker and on the top level in the back is the KAT1 antenna tuner. That is one terrific little tuner! I tossed a wire into the limbs of a couple of trees and pushed a small ground rod into the dirt. A couple of aligator clip jumper wires connected the ground and antenna to the K1 and I set the tuner to work. About 5 seconds tuning time on each band and the match was 1.2:1 or better on 40, 30, and 20. 15 meters was a little tougher, 1.7:1 was the best it could do until I laid out a counterpoise wire and then it quickly found a 1.1:1 match. It has memories so you can band change a lot and it won't need to retune each time you come back to a recently used band. |
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| All 5 circuit boards are visible from the back. Underneath the antenna tuner is the 4 band filter board. Up front you can see the front panel board with the microcontroller and the large blue tuning pot. Along the back panel (from left to right) are the (standard QRP) BNC antenna jack, ON/OFF switch, power connector and key jack. |
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| Ready for operation. This radio sits beside an Icom 706MKIIG, when both of them come in from the cold, so the comparison is easy with an antenna switch. With the same antenna switched from one radio to the other I have yet to find a signal on the Icom that the K1 cannot hear and the internally generated noise level in the Icom is *far* higher than in the K1 so copy is usually easier on the K1. I am really impressed with the reciever in this little kit radio! The "spot" function on the K1 for synchronizing frequency with the other station is a facility that has really spoiled me, all radios should have one. Three crystal filter widths are available and user configurable. The K1 will be my main radio for awhile! |
