[Elecraft] Elecraft K2/10 Build and a lesson learned.

[Don Wilhelm]

Cameron,

Don't feel bad, it happens to the best of us.  I am glad you found the 
problem.

Be careful to make certain pin 1 of the ICs and Rpaks is soldered.  The 
solder pad for pin 1 is a different shape than all the rest, and is 
often missed by builders.

Congratulations on your troubleshooting skills.  Good luck as you add 
the options.

73,
Don W3FPR



On 2/25/2017 6:02 PM, Cameron Francey wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I Just finished my Elecraft K2/10 build.  I have lots of options to add but the basic K2/10 is now working and I'll let it settle in for a week or so to make sure its all ok before adding any options.
>
>
> I started this build at the end of January, taking care to sort and identify all the parts, especially the fixed value capacitors so it made life much easier to select the correct values efficiently during the build.
>
> Everything went well, got the phase 1 and 2 tests done, added the remainder of the components to finish phase 3 and then when I got to the transmitter alignment step I noticed that rather than about 2 watts out as expected it was over 20 watts!  Gee, what was wrong I thought to myself?  I had a quick look over everything, made 100% sure all the components were installed correctly etc, but couldn't find anything wrong.  I even re-counted all the transformer winding's and made sure they were all installed correctly.  Nothing looked out of place.
>
>
> Having recently built two K1's and a K2/100 with KAT100 and nearly every option available I knew it had to be something I had done wrong.  So I kept my logic head on and decided after my initial disappointment and re-checking my work that a break away from the bench was a good start.
>
>
> Back to the bench this morning with a fresh mind I suspected that my issue was somehow with the components that either set or control the power level,  and my reason for thinking that was because the issue was present on every band and the power control pot made no difference to the output power, and RX wise it was performing really well so that eliminated a lot of the sections.  Thinking about ALC or the power control circuit on the control board I decided that was where to start and work outwards from there.  I knew the transmit section of the main RF board was in good shape since it was capable of producing more than 20 watts into a dummy load!
>