[Elecraft] K2 #4309 on the air (finally)

[Gerhard Schwanz]

I finished the basic kit after 40 hours. Had no problem until it came to transmitter alignment. No output at all. After toroid checks and some signal tracing I discovered a broken D36 (fragile). A $8.75 and 6 days shipping experience :-)

Although there's documented that it's fragile builders maybe should be advised how to handle D36. Absolutely no force to the glass body would be a nice hint in the manual.

So I replaced the D36 with a 1N4007 for transmitter alignment and everything worked fine. Couldn't help but had to get in the air once - just to be sure. Worked Italy on 20m with 3m of wire connected to my KAT2, which I had built in the meantime.

Last weekend I added the Battery Option as well as the Noise Blanker and will test the whole kit next weekend. Another 10 hours including the KAT2.

Had a strange thing once. The filters misaligned themselves. The middle frequency suddenly was a few hundred hertz too high. I reran 4MHz, PLL, BFO and filter calibration/test and everything was fine again. Although I don't know what caused this problem. I hope it doesn't occur regularly in the future.

And: TX power decreases slowly when frequency rises. Only abt. 9W on 10m with 14 on 20m.

So, this was my first kit - and will probably not be my last.

Thanks Eric and Wayne - and Scott for the D36!

73

Gerhard
DH3FAW
K2 #4309
www.gs-personal.de