[Elecraft] K1 - exchanging band boards

[Morrow, Michael A.]

tlogan7@cox.net wrote:

> I am trying to remember if swapping an 80m/17m board for the 4 
> band board is a plug and play in the field operation or a "no
> can do" between a 4-band and a 2 band.

I have a 40/30/20/15m board and a 80/17m board for my K1.  Once you've tuned
up each board and calibrated the VFO for the bands on that board according
to the manual, you can swap filter boards with no trouble other than the
expected agravation of removing the KAT1 board for a moment, figuring out
how to grab the installed board if you have the KBT1 internal battery
bracket installed, and keeping track of the mounting hardware for the KAT1
and the filter board.  The K1 MPU senses automatically whether the installed
filter board is four- or two-band.  The K1 MPU also remembers the VFO
calibration constant you set for each HF ham band during the last VFO
calibration, even after the filter board with that band has been removed.
Later when you install the 80/17m board, you'll have to tell band "b1" and
"b2" that they are assigned to 80m and 17m respectively.  Re-install the
four-band board, you'll once again have choices of "b1" through "b4" and
you'll have to tell the K1 the "b1" and "b2" are now 40m and 30m
respectively.  The appropriate VFO calibration constants for the particular
band will be in effect after this band assignment has been made.  Nice
firmware design!

In other words, just swap the boards and re-assign "b1" and "b2" to the
appropriate band using the menu and you're in business.  You don't even have
to re-calibrate the VFO.

I was very happy with how easy it was to re-build my old 40/20m board into a
80/17m board.  The high quality PCB made the work easy to do without
damaging traces.

Mike / KK5F