[Elecraft] To inventory or not:

[Ferguson, Kevin]

My name is Kevin, and I don't count parts.

I built a K2 and all available options without inventorying anything.

I reasoned that I would have 1-2 hours per day available to work on the
kits, and not every day at that. At that rate, I would use something like
3-4 days to inventory the kit. Not only that, but this is exactly the sort
of mindless, meticulus task I don't enjoy, and I am really poor at.

If I found something missing, what time would be saved? I'd still have to
secure the part locally or 
order it from elecraft. Then I'd have to search through the manual to see
where it was used, to decide if I should start or wait for the replacement
to come.  I decided I'd be time ahead even if I had to completely halt
construction when a missing part was discovored.

So I started building earlier by that 3-4 days. I did pre-sort the
capacitors out by value, but did not check quantity or for missing values.
That took about an hour to do that for the basic K2, and maybe 10-15 minutes
each for the options. Used muffin tins and fly-tying organizers (similar to
notions boxes sold in fabric stores)  if anyone cares. Oh yeah, a shallow
cookie sheet works well for pouring all the parts out of the bag and sorting
them out.

So for a K2 and ALL options (except the 100W PA for some reason!) I had one
missing silver mica cap in the ATU kit. I found a lower voltage rated one in
my junk box and pressed on. The replacement from elecraft showed up in a
couple of days, and I spent about 1/2 hour swapping it out, chassis screw to
chassis screw.  

I also had a few caps left over.  So I spent about 10 minutes verifying that
all the empty holes on the circuit boards were supposed to be empty.

So in the balance, I traded less than an hour of not unpleasant tasks, for
several hours of mindless drudgery. A good swap I'd say.

That said, if someone is unfamilier with what the various components look
like, then the inventory is certainly a good place to close that gap in
essential ham knowlege.  I guess I'd bother with an inventory if I was then
going to take the thing to Mars or Antartica to actually  build it, but
otherwise it seems an pointless exercise....like mail, I only want to touch
those parts once if possible!

73
ko0b