[Elecraft] K2 building mistake - my blindspot

[Fred Jensen]

FWIW: At one point in my so-called "engineering career," we were heavy 
into prototyping [thru hole technologies] on the benches.  We were 
plagued with this problem, one or more pins unsoldered.  I was in grad 
school at night, and at dinner one evening, I sat across from a 
psychology professor.  His advice:

"You can check and re-check as much as you want.  You're just going over 
the same steps you went over the first time when you installed the 
part[s].  You just did it [or think you did], it is basic human nature 
to look right past the problem, a lot like proofreading what you've just 
written.  The key is to have some mechanism, separate from just looking 
at the construction steps, to yield a check."

Mine became:  At a "solder point" in the construction, count the number 
of pins to be soldered.  Preferably do it by counting each component 
making a list of how many pins it actually has, and then add up the 
list.  As you solder, stop after each pin and mark down a "1".  When you 
think you're done, add up the 1's.

The key is that the check has separate steps from the steps you take 
while soldering.  I used this on my K2 and KX1 and had no unsoldered 
components.  As I said, FWIW.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013
- www.cqp.org

> On 6/4/2013 10:33 AM, Stan AE7UT wrote:
>> Just finished the first part of the K2 build. Fired it up and the
>> LCD was not working. The end of a 2 day search was a single IC pin
>> not soldered.