[Elecraft] Which one for me?

[Dave]

Larry

I assume by the inclusion of the K1 and KX1 in your list that you are 
looking for CW, and also by including those you are biased towards a 
portable transceiver giving greater priority than a second rig for the 
shack... I have a K2 and K1/4 with boards for 80/40 (two band board) and 
40/30/20/15 (four band board), but not a KX1. Note the K1 with the four 
band module only covers four bands not six, regrettably the K1 doesn't 
cover 80/40/30/20/15 in one package... You can achieve this by swapping 
the band boards around but it needs a screwdriver to remove the upper 
half of the case and the KAT1,  not something you would want to do too 
often.

As a shack rig the K1 is poor, it drifts a little and has a marginal 
dynamic range receiver which overloads on 40 metres on a quarter wave 
vertical during the late afternoon/evening, the attenuator "fixes" the 
problem. The KX1 appears to have a similar limited dynamic range. Where 
these rigs shine is with portable operation, the K1 draws around 58 mA 
on receive which is hard to beat. With an external 10 AA cell NiMh pack 
it produces 5 Watts on key down without difficulty and can be used for 
several hours on 2500 mAh cells. The internal battery pack for the K1 
only takes 8 cells, which limits you to 9.6 Volts when using NiMh cells 
and more importantly limits the K1 (at that Voltage) to around 3 Watts 
output. Primary cells could be used for higher power in the internal 
pack if you wish. With the KAT1 you can tune many of the common 
multi-band antennas, such as some doublets fed with 300 Ohm ribbon and 
end fed wires. The tuning range of the KAT1 is more limited than the one 
in a K2 but works fine provided you pre-select a suitable antenna at 
home and make sure it tunes easily before venturing into the field with it.

My main shack rig is a K2, it's the 10 Watt version. Being a 99% CW 
operator I usually find 10 Watts more than adequate. The K2 has the 
following modules:

K160, KBT2, KDSP2, KSB2, KAT2 and KIO2

With those fitted, the current consumption runs around 360 mA. With less 
modules, especially the KDSP2, the current can be as low as 160 mA. Some 
of these modules can be removed for operating in the field by fitting a 
strip of pins with various resistors/capacitors in their place... This 
is very easy to do and can be worth considering as the receive current 
is roughly halved. The internal battery is a sealed lead-acid type which 
makes the K2 very heavy, weighing in at more than 6 lbs.

The K2 is primarily a CW rig with SSB added, most HF transceivers are 
SSB with CW added... Having the keyer speed and power output knobs on 
the front panel may not seem to be a big deal, but compared to having to 
use the menu system of a FT857D (which I also own) it really is! The 
internal keyer is as good as any keyer I've ever used. Having seamless 
QSK on the K2 is a real pleasure, often the side tone sounds like 
another signal on the band (the antenna change over is diode switched, 
so no relay noise). The internal KAT2 ATU will tune more or less any 
antenna, or at least something which looks like it should work as an 
antenna. The settings are stored on a per band basis which makes it very 
nice to use.

What isn't apparent when looking from the "outside", is the enormous 
pleasure obtained from building your own transceiver, especially the K2. 
There is something called "Mojo" about using your home built K2, even to 
the point of needing to use it at least every weekend - nearly five 
years since building mine!

73, Dave G4AON