[Elecraft] Sorting Parts

[Ward Willats]

Hi Rich:

When the world was young and I was a teenager building Heathkits, I 
used the muffin tin and "leads in the corrugated cardboard" method 
too.

Now my workbench is a tiny plywood table that fits in a closet door 
(and makes my XYL mad because she can't get to the stuff in there!).

With such a small space, I've had good luck taping capacitors, RF 
chokes, diodes and other axial components onto colored 3 x 5 cards 
with scotch tape. This lets me stack them in one place, and label 
them too. Small hardware goes into small personal envelopes labeled 
and held together with a binder clip. Semiconductors in the 
anti-static foam, and odd-ball parts on the table top.

With the K2, I opened and organized one bag at a time -- well, RF1 
and RF2 were done together. This worked well, but Aptos is just down 
the street from me, so replacement parts typically arrive next day 
due to Elecraft's cracker-jack service. (Nothing was missing, BTW, 
the replacement parts I needed were the result of my own stupidity -- 
the mysterious Victoria never seems to miss a thing!)

I am now building the KPA100, and for this one I think an up-front 
inventory is essential in a way that wasn't necessary with the K2 -- 
as many of the capacitors have identical values but different voltage 
ratings, and the toroid cores can be tricky to identify. Time spent 
with the part list up front with this one really speeds up assembly 
later.

-- Ward / KG6HAF