[Elecraft] First An Apology

[Ed Palmer]

I would like to take an opportunity to offer an apology to all on the reflector for my rant of a week or so ago concerning my inability to get this K2 to work as it should. The rant was totally out of line. So with that being said I decided to take some time off from the K2 and come back when I was a whole lot less frustrated.

I do have the PLL reference oscillator in spec. Scott at Elecraft sent me a different PLL crystal, a 12mH inductor and replacements for D16 and D17. I replaced the crystal first and performed the range test. The crystal by itself moved the renge from 8.0 to 10.0. The addition of the 12mH inductor brought the range up to 12.4 which is pretty close to being in the middle of the spec. 

Now I have been chasing the BFO range. The high end of the BFO range is 4918.2 which is quite a bit high from what the manual gives as an expectation (4916-4917). The low end of the range is 4914.8 which isn't even close to the expected range (4909-4912) as indicated in the manual. The resulting range is 3.4 which is too low. I have tried new crystals with virtually no change in range. L33 appears to be intact and constructed correctly in conjunction with R116. I even slipped a small piece of doubled over electrical tape between L33 and R116 to ensure that there were no shorts between the two. With the range being where it is filter alignment is pretty much out of the question.

And finally the pesky 20/30 meter receive problem. I do hear some faint signals but only with slug in L9 screwed all the way to the bottom of the can which seems odd. C23 doesn't seem to affect the receive level at all. L8 and C21 offer very distinct differences in receive level when they are adjusted. 

A wire from the antenna to C21 and C23 makes a huge difference in receive level. I have literally removed all the toroids from the 20/30 meter LPF area and checked for continuity, number of turns and correct cores. I have desoldered and resoldered all the other associated parts in the LPF. Since this appears to be band specific should I try the signal tracing procedure? I don't have a signal generator so I'm not certain if I can accomplish this with atmospheric noise or not. 

I keep thinking I'm missing something simple that's right in front of me. If all else fails I'll send it back to Elecraft but I'm not ready to admit defeat just yet. So any ideas would be appreciated to point me in the right direction for either of these two issues.

73, Ed N0EHQ