[Elecraft] KX1 #978, comments and questions on second stage

[Andrea Borgia]

Hello, everybody.


If you care about the impressions of a first-time builder, here are my 
notes and questions regarding the receiver assembly part:

-page 30, finding inductors: all inductors' colors match, save for L7 
that is really org-vio-gold (two people pronounced it "definitely 
orange") instead of yel-vio-gold. Is it a packing error or a 
documentation error? Should I ask Elecraft for a new inductor? Mind you, 
I have performed a full inventory of every single part, taking care not 
to mix inductors and resistances and and this is the only odd bit that I 
have found.

-page 38, installation of X5: in page 21 (X1 installation), the warning 
about too much solder flowing through the holes must have made quite an 
impression on my inexperienced mind because when the time came to 
install X5 I promptly had a cow upon finding that one of the pins was 
shorted to ground... I removed it, cleaned the pads, reinstalled it 
and... again shorted to ground... then I did what I should have done 
earlier and checked the schematics... and felt very very stupid 8-P
On a related note, how much clearance is there between the crystals and 
the battery packs? My crystals are not as well-aligned as those of other 
builders and I soldered the ground wire on the side rather than on top, 
per instructions.

-page 47, receive current drain test: text states typical receive drain 
is 32mA; the included errata sheet instructs the builder to correct the 
figure (35mA) on the specifications page, but not here. Display 
brightness at 2 gives 35mA and the only thing that saved me from another 
silly have-a-cow situation  was good memory. Ok, I know: it's a trivial 
mistake but it also is rather easy to fix in future releases of the 
documentation 8-)


All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with the results and even toroids were 
not that big deal I thought they would be: I used a short scrap to try 
out the three stripping methods and settled for sandpaper alone (wound 
toroids both had 0.3 ohms for a 13in/33cm wire). Far trickier for me was 
the "piggyback" installation of C56 and R32! Alignments and tests went fine.

Parroting a well-known commercial: "KX1: 360 EUR; Getting it to work 
after one full day of assembly and many mistakes: priceless!"


Pictures are available here (no fancy graphics here, sorry):
http://andrea.borgia.bo.it/kx1


B73,
Andrea.

-- 
Homepage: http://andrea.borgia.bo.it     /    Amateur radio: IZ4FHT
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