[Elecraft] Does build quality affect performance?

[Don Brown]

Hi

I would say that depends. If a beginner follows the directions and installs 
all of the parts correctly the radio has the potential to perform the same 
as a radio built by a pro. The difference is the little tricks you learn 
after building several in the alignment. A beginner can get the alignment 
right but in my experience it may take several tries to get optimized. Where 
the pro will get it the first time. The beginner may not know when something 
is not quite right and live with it because he has never had a properly 
working K2 to compare it with. I see this sometimes when two owners get 
together and compare K2's and notices a difference in one of the rigs. I 
have build many K2's and worked on quite a few and unless there is a mistake 
in the assembly they all work about the same (very good). Some are not very 
pretty inside and others are beautiful but they all work about the same. 
What you get from a pro (or someone that has built several) is the 
experience of making the mistakes on their first radio so that won't happen 
again. I try to build Elecraft products to "display" quality so if you 
remove the covers the insides look as good as the outside. I clean all of 
the circuit boards except the front panel (you do not want to get flux 
residue in the switches or on the display). I use the proper crimp tool for 
all of the connectors and cables as well as dozens of other little 
techniques learned in over 40 years of electronics experience. The beginner 
may not know how to do all of this or may not want to. Does it make the 
radio work any better? Probably not. Its just part of being meticulous 
(anal?) As to the rework , if it is done carefully it will not make any 
difference to the performance although if not done carefully it can make 
quite a mess. The proper tools and techniques help a lot in preventing 
lifted pads and/or damaged circuit boards and again this takes a little 
experience.

It really does not matter who built the radio as long as it was done 
correctly. On the alignment do it a few times to get the hang of it and use 
Spectrogram on the filters. You should be able to put the K2 right on 
frequency and hear little or no frequency shift when you change filters and 
get rated power out on all bands. If you are a beginner or a pro the 
reflector is a great resource to solve any problems you may encounter. 
Someone on the reflector will usually have the answer if not there is always 
Gary at Elecraft. He has seen it all.

Don Brown
KD5NDB




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Darwin, Keith" <Keith.Darwin at goodrich.com>
To: "Elecraft Discussion List" <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 8:18 AM
Subject: [Elecraft] Does build quality affect performance?


Hey guys,

Does a K2's performance vary depending on how well it was built?  Is
there a difference in performance between one built by a pro, one built
by a beginner who has no problems and one built by a beginner who has
lots of problems and does rework to correct them?


- Keith KD1E -


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