[Elecraft] A suggestion

[Tom]

Hi,

I'd like to offer some thoughts to a certain segment of us who have built a
K2 or K1 or who are considering doing so.

 If you've EVER taken even ONE electronics course, please do not read this!


 OK, now that it's just us non-electronics guys (and ladies) we can talk.
By profession, I'm a CPA, and the only thing electronics related that I get
involved with in my field is that sometimes the adding machine doesn't work.

But I'm also a ham, been one since 1964 when I was in high school, and
always enjoyed "making radios and watching them work".  Now, because it's
just us, I can tell you that I never really understood what the heck was
going on inside those things but, back then at least, that was OK, I built
it and it (sometimes) worked!

Don't get me wrong now, 99.9% of the electronics educated hams I've run
across over the years have been very helpful and patient with my questions.
It's just that I've felt very much in strange territory when talking to
these types.  They don't realize it, but when they start talking about Q
factors or pi-networks, my eyes glaze over.  I really, really want to
understand it, and believe me I've tried, it's just that my brain can't
process any of it.  In fact, about the only pi-network I can comprehend is
run by Mrs. Smith's.  And they might as well be talking about Q-tips as Q
factors.

My first transmitter was a Heathkit DX-60, which I built. As I said, I was a
kid and I didn't know that Heath was a good company, or any of that.  I
built it because it was cheaper than buying a pre-built job and I had time
on my hands.  So I put it together, it caught on fire, I fixed it and before
I knew it I was running 75 watts into the final amplifier (whatever that
meant) on the novice bands.

Did I learn anything from this building experience?  Well I kind of knew
that a smoking rig was not a good thing, even before I started.  I guess I
learned what a resistor looked like and that if you put a screwdriver
between the positive lead of that big shiny electrolytic capacitor and the
chassis, you could scare the heck out of your mother.

This may sound blasphemous, but Heath really didn't do a very good job of
teaching me why the rig worked, just that if I followed the steps and was
careful, it most likely would work.  (The fire was the result of a wiring
error made by my not following the instructions carefully.)

Meanwhile, his friends in technical school were leaving this future
accountant in the dust when it came to understanding why we were able to
actually communicate with someone 500 miles away (the bands were REALLY dead
in 1964).

Over the years that followed, life started happening to this ham and while I
was able to do the minimum required to keep my license active, I certainly
didn't do anything to enhance my knowledge of electronics.

About ten years or so ago, maybe more now, I picked up a ham radio magazine
("Ham Radio", as a matter of fact), and the sparks started to fly again
(yeah, I know).  So I did all kinds of justification and went out and bought
an almost-top-of-the-line transceiver made by one of the big names in our
hobby.

I was amazed at how easy things had become.  I just pressed a button and my
rig was tuned.  No more dipping the meter (whatever we did that for) or
worrying about blowing the final out (that I knew about - $6.00 for a new
one was about the same as a bowling date with Susie down the block, back in
'64).  I was talking to Europe, South America and all of the United States.
They even gave us a few more bands to use while I wasn't paying attention!

Then one day, the new transceiver didn't work properly.  So I unscrewed
about 117 screws of various sizes, took one look at what was going on
inside, sized things up, jiggled the red wire and replaced 114 screws ('why
did they give extras?', I thought), and shipped it off for service.
Fortunately, it was still on the warranty and it *only* cost me forty bucks
for shipping (both ways, I guess).  I got it back and it worked - well kind
of.  It worked if I plugged the CW key into the headphone jack and the
headphones three-quarters of the way into the key jack.  Of course, the
external speaker was no longer grounded to the rig so it had to be
jury-rigged.  I called the repair guys and they said they would fix it and I
should send it right back, but they couldn't pay for shipping.  Another
$40.00, I don't think so.

Now, this is a personal thing and everybody is different, but around this
time, I started to feel like I wasn't really a ham.  I might as well have
been talking on the telephone as over the airwaves, for all I was doing from
my personal input.  I think not being able to fix the rig, really awoken me
to this fact of life.

I didn't want to stop being a part of the hobby again, but I wasn't really
happy with what I was doing.  I still wanted to "make radios and watch them
work" just as always.  And I guess fixing them when they stopped working, as
well.

I built a couple of small things and had a modicum of success, but even
then, I felt I was just assembling parts.  Then came along the "Elmer-101"
project on the qrp-l e-mail list.  I tried this and had a ball!  I never had
a contact, with the rig, but the guys moderating the project, were
absolutely great! (Yeah, those IEEE types do have a purpose, after all).  As
I built the little qrp rig, step by step, they explained what was going on,
what changes to the circuit would do, and even why certain components were
chosen over others.  This was the first time I ever knew what I was doing.
"Pretty neat, for an accountant", I thought.

I'm not sure of the timing, but I started to hear about the Elecraft K2 and
thought, "I can build that!, and once I do I'll have a rig that I can fix
and modify".  But the price made it something that wasn't to be taken
lightly, in the event I was getting in over my head.  Once I found that  if
I messed things up, they would fix it for about a hundred bucks (at the
time) I thought "heck that's about what it was costing me to ship the other
rig all over the place", so I was sold.

Well, I built the K2 and the instructions were thorough, but man, all I was
doing was assembling again, and I really didn't know what was going on.
These electronics guy mean well, but they really can't help it.  Once they
start to say something like "The K2 receiver is a single-conversion
superhet, utilizing double-tuned bandpass filters on each band and
down-conversion to a low I.F. (4.915 MHz)."  It's like they are saying to me
"you mean to tell me you took Suzie down the block bowling when you could
have spent that $6.00 on a new final?"  Well, yeah I did.

Anyway the K2 works, the guys at Elecraft walked me through the very minor
problems I had in building it.  But here's where I am now with it, and I
offer this as a suggestion, to you, if you can relate to what I've been
saying so far:

I get pretty good signal reports when working CW so I'm pretty satisfied
that the transmit side of the rig is working well.  However, I've read that
the K2's receiver is a very, very good one.  It must be, just look at the
statistics for it on the Elecraft web page (yeah, right - and then we'll
discuss quantum physics in Medieval times).   So how do I know if it's
working well or not?  Well, I brought my K2 to a meeting of our club and one
of the guys compared his signal to mine, on the same antenna, and they both
sounded the same.  I could be satisfied with this comparison, this guy is
'one of them' and certainly knows what he's talking about.  But my K2 sounds
about the same as my other rig (the one that has all the frequent flyer
miles).  This could be a good sign or a not so good sign.

Well, I've decided to use the information provided in the trouble shooting
section primarily to find out about the rig, to see if its working up to
snuff and maybe even learn a bit about electronics in the meantime.  The
section (in the K2 manual, I'm guessing the K1 has a similar section) on
trouble shooting is pretty straightforward.  To see if the receiver is
working properly, the Elecraft guys show you how to build a probe to measure
RF voltage and how to build a simple signal generator.  With these two very
simple to build items, you can actually trace a signal from the antenna to
the speaker (something, for this accountant which is comparable to tracing
the origins of the universe - always heard about it but never really did
it!).  The steps tell you along the way (sometimes, anyway) what a high or a
low reading might indicate, how it effects performance and of course how to
fix it.  Cool!  There is a similar section for the transmitter.

So I've been poking and prodding under the cover and so far, no fires, not
even a meaningful spark to impress my wife.  Maybe the K2 is at its optimum
level (I can't believe I did everything right with a million parts, though),
if it is good for me, if not, I'll find it and fix it, then it'll be really
good for me.

In closing, I think that the technical expertise on this list is absolutely
phenomenal and a great resource for the rest of us.  Based upon, what I
recall as a very high level of participation in the qrp-l "Elmer 101"
project, I'll venture to say that there are a lot of us 'accountants' out
there that might be a little shy in the midst of all this wisdom.  Let's
give them a chance to help us, they really want to.

We built our K2's and K1's, let's get to know them!


Tom McCulloch
WB2QDG

K2 s/n 1103





I may run qrp but I've got a Higher Power!