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               West Essex Amateur Radio Club, Essex Fells, NJ

                                   an ARRL Special Service Club             

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Mike, WA2QIC's Ham Blog

Page 15

27-JAN-08:   Examining the manual for the steps following the diode installs, I determined that there would be no harm in continuing even though I didn't have the IN5711 diode on hand.  I discovered that both local electronics stores are not open on weekends, so I ordered the various missing parts from Mauser Electronics with the exception of the torroid....not enough info to order the torriod.  Haven't received any parts from Elecraft yet - parts support turn around seems much slower than their five star tech support.

Here is a pic of the RF board after all assembly steps on Pg 50-51 are complete.  These pages cover resistor installs, Diodes, and a few transistors:

Moving on to Page 52 - 53, which specifies a large number of capacitors as well as a several IC's and a few misc parts.  Here I hit another snag.  RF Choke RCF13 has a resistor-like body.  There are several Solendial RF Chokes for this kit, and they come separated from the resistor packs (thank God). Also they are larger in size than the 1/4 resistors.  However, the values of the Chokes are determined by color.  Uh oh.  There is a group of Chokes with Brown-Black-Brown and one Choke Brown-Black-Red - ugh.  This is not helpful to the color challenged.  And I don't have any measuring gear that can help me out of this one.  So, after studying these Chokes side by side for a long time under 5x magnification, I took a gamble on which were the Brn-Blk-Brn and the lone Brn-Blk-Rd.  Below is a pic of the RF board after these two pages of assembly are complete, along with a close up of RCF-13.  Did I guess right? I think I did.  N2NO will no doubt tell me if I did good or not.

After Pg 53 of assembly, the Rf board is beginning to fill out nicely. I estimate it took me about 3-4 hours to complete these 2 pages. I am a little puzzled by the order in which parts are installed in these sections.  Instead of installing all caps or resisters, diodes, transistors etc of the same value/type, the manual has you jumping around to all different valued parts.  It may be six of one/half dozen of another, but I think it would be easier to install parts by component value - meaning - install all 103 Capacitors, then all 104 Caps, then 102 Caps and so on, rather than a 102 here, a 104 there etc.  I think this approach would be better at preventing the wrong valued part from being installed accidentally.  If I recall correctly Heathkit used to do exactly what I am suggesting.  I would guess the good Elecraft folks are sick and tired of being compared to Heathkit, but.....sorry guys.

Anyway, I am assuming there is a method to the madness, so I am following the steps in the manual.

Note, I have lowered the resolution on the pics so they load a little faster.  Resolution is now "high" as opposed to maximum resolution.  I don't notice the resolution difference myself, but the pics do load faster.

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