[Elecraft] First K2 is working in HA

[Phil Wheeler]

Arato,

Comments below .. but few answers :-;

Arato Andras wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am Andras from Budapest Hungary. My #2398 K2 started to work in the
> last days of 2001. It was my very first kit. I made two mistakes, forgat
> to install one capacitor C84 in PLL reference part and wounded everywhere
> plus one turn in toroids. 

Only two mistakes on your first kit is really amazing; you did very
well!

> As I know, my K2 is the first Elecraft rig in HA (probably because this
> price is high for us in Hungary).
> 

Very cool!

> One question: is it necessary to correct wounding of L33? Now it has
> 41+4+4 turns instead of 40+3+3 (the software man problem is here to count
> from zero or 1 :-). L33 was the only toroid I did not corrected.
> 

I cannot answer this.  I believe in my K2 (S/N 380) L33 comes as a
pre-built canned transformer .. but I may be mistaken (it has been a
while).

> Second question: the sound with the internal speaker is rather bad. I
> found a cheap old passive speaker. It sounds much better. The sound in the
> headphones is better. I had to use an isolator tape at the front part for
> eliminating the echo of the internal speaker. Why is it so quit and
> distorted? Is this only me problem? The case is unfortunately is not
> closed (but nicely modular) of course.
> 

On possible problem is overtightening the mounting screws for the
speaker.  But there have been other messages on this subject.  This
website is an excellent resource for such information:

http://www.qsl.net/ve3mcf/elecraft_reflect/index.html

> Finally another good news: My K2 is speaking HUNGARIAN with K2Voice
> program! I used 16 bit 16 KHz sampling rate but Microsoft ADPCM coding
> when recorded the speech files. It works well as you use standard playing
> routines. The size of my .wav files are not higher.
> 

It's a good thing mine does not speak Hungarian.  I'd have to get my
(Hungarian) ex-wife to translate .. and that could be a problem :-;

> I will have suggestions how to improve the usability of this option by
> blind hams (my wife Theresa HG5BDR is blind and lost her left arm in
> childhood so she can use the fully automatic option of the K2Voice).
> 
> The very important improvement would be to interrupt the speech when new
> message arrives from K2.
> 
> Thank you for reading my long and "Hunglish" mail. Waiting for suggestions
> and hope to meet you on the bands.
> 

YOur "Hunglish" is excellent, Arato.  Good luck with your K2!

73, Phil