W.E.A.R.C.

               West Essex Amateur Radio Club, Essex Fells, NJ

                                   an ARRL Special Service Club             

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Mike, WA2QIC's Ham Blog

Page 10

WOW!  Considering that I had doubts about some of my earlier resistance measurements on the Front Panel and Control Boards, I didn't expect the radio to come to life on the first attempt!  While I did find that my measurements were OK for the Front Panel, I had doubts about the control board.  None the less I didn't see a high risk to assembling them together and giving the voltage tests a whirl.  Every measurement/test was perfect except one:  The preselector button was supposed to trigger a relay for each of 3 settings.  I heard a relay trip for only 2 of the 3 button pressings.  So I may have a problem.  I will have to email Elecraft on this because there are no troubleshooting notes that I can find that discuss the preselect switch/relay test. 

07-Sep-06:  Chatted with Elecraft on the relay issue.  They offered guidance that the problem was either a damaged relay, a bad solder on one or more of the relays, or a crushed U01 IC pin.  I found that one pin on one relay was not soldered.  So I soldered it up, and the relay test worked just fine.  Onward and upward.

17-Sep-06:  Sorry folks - been having some joint trouble of late that has prevented me from continuing the build.  Hope to be back at it in less than a week.  I am too young to be this old!

02-Oct-06:  For those of you following this build I offer my humble apologies for the delay in the continuation of this saga.  The build has been interrupted by a rather severe inflammatory attack involving my right hand.  I am unable to do fine detail work.  Working with the Docs to try to get this under control - we thought we had it licked but I suffered a set back this past week.  I have lost about 60% range of motion in my hand and have only 10% grip strength.  I hope it comes back!  Wish me luck, I need some.  I will be back at the build just a soon as I can.

Stay tuned...

09-Jan-08:  "Stay tuned" HA!  Shortly I will be returning to finish the K2.  I am going to resume by building the Noise Blanker and Automatic Antenna Tuner accessory boards.  The reason for this is so that Rev A to B accessory upgrade parts for the main RF motherboard can be installed as I go.  The mods are written assuming you already installed the Rev A version of the accessory and are retro-fitting Rev B.  This is not the case with me, so I can avoid installing Rev A parts, and then having to de-solder and re-install Rev B parts just by walking through the accessory builds.  I am rolling the dice a bit that this approach will not interfere with periodic PCB voltage and resistance testing on the RF board when it comes to it.  Also, I have since upgraded my digital camera from a very dated and quirky Fuji to a Canon EOS 40 Rebel ATI.  I expect that the quality of the pics will therefore improve.  Some of the macro Fuji pics came out fuzzy (as you can see), and nothing I did would get the focus correct.  With the Canon, I expect this will no longer be an issue. 

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   This old Radio