[Elecraft] Rebuilding already built K1- 2 Band boards for other bands (80/17)

[Mike Morrow]

Mike Mahan wrote:

> I will ... try to rebuild one of the other boards for 80/17.
> 
> Have any problems rebuilding these boards for another band?

I think that is a very good thing to do with a surplus two-band board.  That's what I did.  After I built a four-band board (for 40/30/20/15m), I bought an 80 meter and a 17 meter set of parts for my old 40/20m two-band board.  As I recall, parts kits were about $8 per band.  However, 

(1)  The parts sets did NOT include any wire for the toroids!
(2)  The parts kit for 80m that I received did NOT have RF-RFC8, which is to be installed in place of a jumper on the RF board on newer K1 RF boards, or to be installed over a cut RF PCB trace on older K1 RF boards, for 80m operation.
(3)  The parts kit for 80m that I received did NOT have RF-C78, which is installed on the RF PCB for 80m operation on newer boards, and should also be installed on older K1 RF boards, even though Elecraft has never issued anything saying so (not even in the application note for modifying old K1 RF boards to be equivalent to the later K1 RF boards).

I made the change two years ago, so I'm not sure if the items in the list above are included now.  I'd sure find out and make arrangements to get these items at the time you get the basic parts kits.

It took less than an hour to remove a little more than 30 components from my 40/20m board, and a little more than an hour to install the 80/17m components.  Due to the very high quality of PCB used by Elecraft, component removal was clean and easy, and my re-built board actually looks better than it did before I re-built it.  I used nothing but a Radio Shack solder sucker and a 35 watt soldering pencil.

Tune up went well, with about 7 watts max output on 80m, and 5 watts on 17m.  When you finish alignment of the 80/17m board, you'll have stored LCD display calibration constants for those bands in the K1 itself, so all you have to do in the future is re-assign b1 and b2 to 80m and 17m and the K1 will use the appropriate cal data.  The K1 also senses automatically whether a two-band or four-band board is installed.

I don't often place the 80/17m board in my K1, but still it's nice to have the capability to cover six HF bands on the K1.

73,
Mike / KK5F