[Elecraft] K2 #7446 is alive and made my first QSO

[Don Wilhelm]

Stan,

That is *not* normal unless the bands are totally dead and there is 
little atmospheric noise.
You should easily hear the receiver internal noise with that high AF 
gain setting.  A normal AF gain setting is a 9 to 11 o'clock position.

Take a look at transformer T7 - the red winding should be closest to U12 
- it is sometimes mounted backwards.
Double check the position of the D40 and D41 diodes soldered on the 
bottom of the RF board.

If those checks do not reveal anything incorrect, you may have to do 
some Receive Signal Tracing as detailed in Appendix E of the manual.  
For that, you will need a strong signal generator - the XG3 set for 0 
dBm is greater than the 0.14 volts input asked for by the manual, so a 
potentiometer (200 to 500 ohms) across the generator may be necessary, 
or use a 3 dB attenuator.
If you do not have the XG3 or other suitable RF generator, you can build 
the simple crystal oscillator from the circuit shown in the manual.

Note when Signal Tracing, when you get to the check at the output of 
U12, you will not be able to achieve that saturation level unless you 
lift one end of the D40 and D41 diode pair.  The 'expected values' in 
the manual were generated before those diodes were added to the design.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 7/20/2013 2:33 PM, Stan AE7UT wrote:
> Just finished aligning my K2 last night.
> Made a nice QSO 1,000 miles away on 5 watts.
> It was great getting a 599 report on my new K2.
>
> One thing that seems a little different is the volume I'm getting.
> I have a K2 someone else build that is fully loaded.  It is much louder
> on receive than this one.  I have the RF gain all the way up and the AF
> gain 3/4 of the way up to get a good volume.
> Is that normal for a "base" K2?
>