[Elecraft] Short FD report on our K2/100 experiences

[Tom Hammond]

Hi folks:

The Mid-MO ARC (Jefferson City MO) used my K2/100 (S/N 00008) for our CW 
station again this year.

The K2 played flawlessly and garnered some pretty strong support from those 
ops who used it.

The only even semi-negative comment I heard came from an ex-K2 owner, who 
said he still missed the VBT (Variable Bandwidth Tuning) which he had on 
his TS-930S. He found it still easier to use then the four available filter 
bandwidths on the K2... I must agree... VBT on the K2 would have been killer.

 From previous experience, I was ready for a 'warm' heatsink on the KPA100. 
So I brought my custom-made (but ugly) auxiliary cooling fan/plenum to fit 
over the top of the KAP100 heatsink. As a result, I don't believe the 
heatsink even got warm, much less hot, even though I found that one of the 
ops, I guess in an effort to eke out as much output as he could, had 
cranked the output power up to 110W... I'd been running it at around 80W 
previously.

The K2 more than held its own on 20M and 40M, the bands with the most 
strong signals... seldom did I have to use a bandwidth more narrow than 
1kHz, though a couple of the newer ops felt compelled to use the 400Hz 
bandwidth setting.

We did note a bit of front end overload on 20M, but found that it was 
coming from the 3rd station, which had just switched to 20M CW as well!! We 
fixed that right away and no more problems.

A great time was had by all.

Oh, I almost forgot, dispite only marginal propagation, we managed 990 CW 
Q's in 24 hours with the K2/100.

And, thanks to all those who worked us, and to those who extended their 
regards as well.

73,

Tom Hammond   N0SS