[Elecraft] K1 Construction. Preparing Toroid Wires and soldering techniques.

[Martin.Evans@simoncarves.com]

Greetings guys. I've just completed construction of the KFL1-4 filter board
for my K1 and just thought I would share a few thoughts on toroid leads. I
know the elecraft approved method is heat stripping, but I didn't have much
joy with this method myself, so I fell back on my normal tedious method of
scraping the enamel off. I used the edge of a small (1" dia) model makers
abrasive wheel but any other abrasive tool would do. It's a bit fiddley and
you need to keep rotating the wire to make sure you have all the enamel
off, (wire must not be damaged ie knicked) but it does the trick. When
tinning I used a nice hot iron and applied small amounts of solder 2 or 3
times. I find that if you try to tin the whole lead with one application of
solder, the flux burns away too fast and it only "takes" on part of the
lead and you end up with a blob of useless old solder hanging off it.
Better to use a very small ammount of solder and tin a small part (say
1/4") at a time  and using fresh solder each time. When tinned, you can use
light abrasion to gently scrape off any tiny black dots of burnt flux. I
also applied IPA is a degreasant before tinning (but maybe didn't need to).
Anyhow I found that this works for me, the leads all soldered straight away
to the PCB.

I think lots of beginners don't realise that once fresh solder has melted
it must be run and in place within 3 secs prefferably less, any longer and
you need fresh solder. The flux only does it's job for a few seconds if
that. eg if the solder doesn't take/run immediately it is applied, then
remove iron, clean wires/pad of old flux and repeat with clean tip and new
solder, don't fiddle about with it, quit and start again. Hope this helps.
Soldering is a bit of an art and we all do it differently, you've just got
to find what works for you.

BTW, I want to put up a random wire for my K1 when it is finished. I will
be using the auto ATU add-on and I have all 6 bands 80-40-30-20-17-15. I
have about 110' of horizontal space in a straight line. Can I run the wire
feeder horizontally along the ground (or even below the ground) before
rising. Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks



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