[Elecraft] Up Grade Question K1 or KX1

[Don Wilhelm]

Bob,

Considerations like those that you ask about are indeed done - but they are
done at design time, not after the fact.  Every designer/engineer is
responsible for evaluating the price to performance ratio for everything in
his design, and is also responsible for making the design perform according
to its specifications.

While it may be possible to improve some aspect of a particular design, it
should start with a change to the specifications.  The specifications are
the starting point for evaluating a design, and the choice of components
used will flow from the specifications.

It is doubtful that a consumer would be able to accomplish anything other
than an increased price by changing to a higher quality part.  If you would
like to do the exercize, I would welcome seeing the results, but it would
take a significant effort and investment in test gear to actually implement
such changes and test the resulting overall performance to determine if any
difference resulted from the part change.

The substance of what you are asking can probably be summarized by the
difference between 'mil-spec' parts and 'industrial' parts.  If the
application and design specifications do not require the use of mil-spec
parts, their use will only increase cost.  If a piece of equipment is indeed
constructed of mil-spec parts, it may would likely perform just the same as
with the industrial parts unless the specifications were also changed.

An analogy might be found in a resistor - if a resistance somewhere between
9k and 11k is adequate for the task, the only result of purchasing a 10k 1%
resistor for this application would be an increased cost - a 10% resistor is
just as good.

73,
Don W3FPR

> -----Original Message-----
>
> Sort of a abstract question from a newbi..has any one gone
> through the K1 or
> KX1 compomet by componet and asked if this is the best
> capacitor/coil/resistor/crystal/transistor (with in the same
> price range) to
> optimize the transceivers ?? I mean run the numbers and such ??
>
> Bob
>