[Elecraft] K1 backlight

[Paul Huff]

I thought that I would share a little report about my recent K1 backlight 
installation.



I was very nervous about tearing into a perfectly good working radio.  But 
as someone recently said to me, once you make the first snip on a connection 
the radio is broken and now needs to be fixed!



The old display came off easily but cleaning out the pad holes on the board 
for the new display was a real pain, and there sure are a lot of them. 
Using as little heat as possible I was able to remove much of the solder 
with solder wick but most of the holes remained filled.  I ended up heating 
up each pad and, while the solder was still melted, pushed a steel sewing 
pin through the hole.  The solder doesn't stick to the steel and as soon as 
it solidified I could pull the pin back out, leaving a hole just big enough 
for the new display leads.  That was the really tough part of the job. 
Getting the power to the backlight took a little bit of finesse but it wasn't 
too bad, and installing the new display on top of the backlight went 
smoothly.  From start to finish the whole job took about 3 hours.



The upgrade was well worth the cost and effort.  That green glow really 
looks great and I can now easily read the display even in a dark room.



73

Paul - N8XMS