I was on the road for a couple hours today on a work trip so I fired up the HF and played around a bit. I noticed when I first flipped the rig over to HF my noise floor (on 20 meters) was about S3-S4 when it was low, dropping beyond that occasionally. However, the noise floor would pop way up over S9 occasionally.

Most of my driving today was way out in the country so I got a great opportunity to get in to some real quiet RF environments. To my surprise the noise floor became non-existant in places. All of the noise I was picking up from before was power line noise and other crap flying around around/near town.

I thought my antenna came un-plugged or my attenuator was on because the noise was so low. I had my antenna connection pop out of the tuner (check my post on the mobile installation and the HF antenna/tuner – just a wire plugged in to the center pin on the tuner) last week once so I knew that was a possibility this time around. A quick spin of the dial revealed activity on the band so my antenna was surely connected!

When I get a chance I will still do the grounding. I am not sure when I will get around to it though, maybe in a few months. I have a cap on order so once I get through a few of these “bumps in the road” I can apply a little more of myself to my mobile install. For now it is working much better than I could have asked for anyway. Cool stuff!

I also bent my face plate mount where I want it. Now I can actually read the display when I am driving and not have to lean way over. I have enough space to lift the console lid and the knobs are within easy reach with my arm resting on the console – more comfortable than my other truck. The only thing I wish I had in this truck that my other one did was an arm rest that folds out of the seat. The only place I have to rest my arm is the console lid – which is comfortable, but it is a bit far compared to being right next to the seat.

The current face plate mount works OK. The biggest improvement I can make to it now is to extend it about 3/4″. The reason is I am using one of the stock screws (that holds on some of the front parts of the console container to the “frame”) to hold the mount. This works but the single screw allows too much movement as the mount likes to move around it. I can tighten the screw down and make it not move a whole lot, but it works its way loose. By extending the mount I can fold the back part down and around the plastic that the screw goes in to. This will lock it in place so it can’t move – sort of like a coat hanger over the top of a door. The “lip” latches on and holds it from moving. Combined with the screw this would be a pretty bomb-proof method.

Again, not one hole has been poked in the truck (as of yet) in this whole process!

If you read my last post you know that I ran the audio from my FT-857D to the sound system in the truck. There is an auxiliary audio jack (1/8″ stereo jack) on the dash board - normally used for music (IPOD, MP3 player, etc). I utilized it for my ham radio instead!

The way I had the audio run in to the system was through the headphone jack on the side of the face plate of the FT-857D. This was a bit cumbersome as the plug stuck out from the faceplate and the audio had to be adjusted by the volume control on the rig.

My updated method is to use the accessory plug on the back of the FT-857D. I used the 6 pin plug. There is a constant level audio port on there – the 1200 baud Data Out pin. Ground the shield of your cable to the GND pin and the center to the data out and you have constant audio! The 9600 port gave me constant audio, but it was un-squelched. The 1200 baud port was squelched and works OK.

The only improvement I could make to this set up is to increase the intensity of the constant level audio. As it sits right now the audio is a lot softer than it was if I adjusted the volume knob through the headphone jack. It is better than needing to worry about where the volume knob is though so I am happy with it. I just need to turn up the truck’s volume knob a bit more than I would otherwise. I don’ t know if there is a way around it other than putting a line level amplifier on the  system (too much work).

This is all a continuous experiment and work-in-progress! I am sure there will be a point in time when I am content with what I have done. I can live with the audio. There is definitely a lot more work to do though.  

I do have a cap for the truck on order. This will play in to how some of my gear is installed (antennas, cables, etc). So stay tuned for more. The dealer gave me a 3 week estimate on when it will come in so we’ll see what happens. Routing the wires out of it to the HF antenna might be a bit of a challenge. I will surely post about my progress in that area as it happens.

It is a 2010 F250 lariat crew cab short bed with the 6.4L Power Stroke Diesel engine. Of course its 4×4 also.

My mobile installation includes my regular FT-857D for now. It does everything – VHF/UHF/HF all modes.

The antennas for my installation right now are a dual band whip with a lip mount on the hood and a 102″ whip with an LDG Z-11Pro tuner for HF. I had the lip mount on the top of one of my back doors in my old truck. That was problematic. I fought pinched coax issues and it was just a pain in the butt. So I decided to put the antenna on the hood. It is a lower profile as well – if I am going to need to park in a parking garage I can take the HF antenna off and still have my normal VHF/UHF comms. The drawback is lower efficiency. For daily driving it won’t be an issue at all. I can hit my usual repeater on 5 watts all day long as it is.

The HF side of things will need some work. I have the antenna hooked up and running but this is where most of my effort from now on will be spent. The reasoning is I have a lot of grounding work to do. Based on running HF in my last truck I learned how much of a difference grounding makes in a mobile installation (also referred to as “bonding”). The single most important ground I found, going towards reducing RFI from the vehicle running, is the exhaust pipe to the frame. The reason is that the ground towards the rear of the truck will cut off the radiation properties of the exhaust pipe. If you think about it – the rubber isolators to keep the pipe “quiet” make nice RF insulators. The length of the exhaust pipe also makes a GREAT radiator of any RF generated at the engine (injectors, spark plugs, coils, motors, etc). Grounding the pipe kills the radiation. The second most important grounds (plural) are the cab and bed together, hood (if it doesn’t already have good grounding) to cab, and all of that to the frame. This will kill ground loops and give you a solid RF ground. An issue a lot of people have with mobile installs is that the RF from the radio starts to play havoc with the computers on the vehicle. The other issue is RF can get back in to the radio. When you ground everything well you improve the performance of the radio system enormously.

OK – on to the installation. The first thing I will say is that everything I have done so far has been 100 times EASIER than in my 2003 Chevy Silverado. For those of you who are a bit fearful of poking holes in a brand new vehicle – this installation has made NOT A SINGLE HOLE. All of my wires have been run through existing openings. Even better – the only parts I have had to remove for the installation are access panels to factory wiring channels. In my last truck I did a lot of work pulling out the rear seat and running wires under the carpet/insulation. No need here in the Super Duty. Everything is easy to access for the most part. The hardest part – figuring out how to do it!

My first step was to put on my dual band antenna. Here are a few pictures of what I am dealing with:

The mount has been adjusted to keep the antenna vertical, or close to it. The adjustments in the mount are detented so I can’t get it precisely where I want it. I ended up with a bit of forward lean. I figured the antenna would go back to vertical when on the road so that wasn’t too bad.

The coax is run back towards the firewall right under the black plastic where the windshield wipers are. I took out one screw to give me the space I needed to route the coax/connector through. Then I ran the coax down the door jam (on the OUTSIDE of the hinges – towards the front of the truck, not the cab). This is not the ideal way to do this, but it works for now. The better route would be to get the coax through the firewall as I routed the power cable (later down the page).

Once the coax was past the hinges I ran it on the outside of the weather stripping until I got to the separation between the weather stripping. As you can see the factory wiring channel is exposed.

I like the design of the weather stripping Ford has used. It is really robust. It slides over top a crease in the sheet metal and is a very solid hold.

This is what everything looks like all said and done. The coax is run all the way to the rear behind the seat to plug in to the rig.

Here you can see, somewhat, the radio under the back seat. Its a real trick getting it in and out. I am glad the FT-857D is as skinny as it is! Otherwise it would be a no-go for sure. The black flat thingy in the front is the FoldFlat Storage plate. When the seat is up you can fold this out and it makes a nice hard flat floor for carrying something like a TV box or a dresser.

Edit: I figured I would mention this also. You may note that the radio is not bolted in. I don’t have the hard mount installed, and likely will not (in the near future anyway). The reason is that I use the FT-857D SO much. It is my grab-and-go radio. If I permanently install it in the truck it would take me as long to get it out as it will to put it in. I don’t have it grounded yet, but that is coming as with the other grounding I am going to do on the truck itself. Having the remote cables and mount for the face plate (a clip-in style) is as far as my permanent installation is going to get.

I may get another rig for the truck at some point. Maybe an IC-7000, I like the IF-DSP and color screen. Then again, I already know the FT-857D really well from operating one for so long. It would make having a do-everything grab-n’-go radio MUCH easier. I have a go-kit for this FT-857D (Pelican case) that has been used maybe 3 times since I made it because I always have to tear the rig out of the truck to use it.

I actually did the hard-wired power after I put the antennas on, but I’ll toss it in the middle here.

The power wires are 10 gauge stranded (from Lowes). I ran them down the drivers side wiring channel from the firewall to the back of the cab.

The positive side passes through a 50 amp circuit breaker. I have been using these in all of my mobile installs and they work pretty well. I have had a  couple of them go bad, though. They are supposed to be water proof but I think the under-the-hood environment takes its toll after a few years. This was one of the good ones I had left. The negative lead is straight to the battery. After all, if it grounds out it goes to the same place anyway – the truck is a standard negative ground chassis.

There are actually two batteries in this beast – one on each side. This one is on the drivers side.

The wires go back up towards the firewall to the following pass-through.

I tried to get them through the boot but it is just too tight for this size of wire. Plus, the boot is real hard to get to. I can’t reach it other than my finger tips from under the hood unless I start removing stuff. The engine compartment is JAM PACKED. They didn’t waste any space in this at all. That being said – some more major engine work with the 6.4L diesel requires the cab to be removed for just this reason – you physically can’t reach everything.

The wires are resting against the plastic “clip”, not the metal. Even if the insulation is worn through the positive wire won’t ground out unless it contacts the negative wire next to it (I doubt that could happen, and I would say wearing through the wires to begin with is a slim chance as there isn’t anywhere for the wires to rub/move – tight fit). I will keep an eye on it though.

The pannel here is to the left of the emergency brake. The power cable is just routed through and on in to the wiring channel. Again, everything in this truck is SO easy to get in to!

This is the rear channel. The front one was shown earlier (with the coax for the dual bander passing through the split weather stripping in the center). If you look close around the seat belt anchor you can see the rest of the wire coiled up. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

OK, so moving on to the HF side of things – at least what I have now.

Here is the mount. It is nothing special - just a piece of wood cut from a 2×4, aluminum bar, and a 3/8″x24 mount (the hard mount with a bolt, not an SO-239). The wire hooks in to it with a ring terminal on the bottom then it is all sealed up with my favorite stuff – Plasti-Dip!

The lead to the antenna is just a solder blob on the end of the wire press-fit in the center pin of the Antenna SO-239 on the tuner. Nothing fancy and it works. Bannana plugs also work. At the house I use an old PL-259 and a short piece of 14g solid wire with a spade connector on it for connecting random wires. It is the best method I’ve come up with, I was just lazy here and re-used an earlier experiment (this whole antenna set up).

The coax and power lead can be see going back to the cab.

This is the vent that the wires go to behind the passenger side rear seat. The liner was a pain to get off – it is held in with a couple of the push clips. They take a lot of work to get out. Be careful – it is possible to break them.

Here is a better shot. The motor there is the drive for the rear window.

The PL-259 was a trick to work through the vent opening. I managed to do it. There is plenty of room but the cable and connector come in sideways to the back of the cab so you have to bend it 90deg to fit through the opening. The string helps out with that – note it is wrapped around the center pin too, not just the part right against the jacket.

There is a slot in the liner right next to the vent so I just poked the wires through. Pretty nice!  You can see one of the push pin type clips to the upper left of the latch looking thing against the liner (the round thing). The latch is an access panel for a car seat anchor. There are 3 of the anchors and each one has a clip/pin near it.

On to the normal, non-torn up INSIDE!

Click on the picture to enlarge it. The FT-857D is wired in to the sound system in the truck. I have an audio cable from the headphone jack (with a toroid choke to keep RF out) to the AUX port on the dash. If you take a look at the touch screen the bar on the bottom right (white with a blue-ish tint) is the input meter. Its the same thing on any kind of input audio device – keep the bars from peaking and the audio is nice and clean. Once the bars peak the input is over-driven and the audio gets distorted.

I believe there is a constant level audio port on the accessory plug on the back of the FT-857D for digital modes. I will dig up the manual and see if I can hard-wire that in to the truck. That way I don’t have to deal with the audio cable how I have it here, as well as not have to worry about where the volume knob is on the rig.

There is also a speed compensated audio control. This is nice – no need to touch the knobs going down the road! The only drawback is when my phone rings – it cuts out all audio sources and turns in to my phone. It is great for hands-free operation but if I am in the middle of a conversation on the radio it drops the radio audio.

Note the use of the existing screw for mounting. No holes drilled (in the truck, yet…)

The metal mount I used needs to be adjusted or replaced entirely. Having the display angled like that is hard to see. This definitely needs some improvement.

This truck is a real dream. I had the opportunity to get it and it was too good to pass up. My fuel mileage (again, its a diesel) has been around 16mpg so far (3.55 gears). This is with a non-broken in engine. I expected to be around 13-14mpg so I am more than happy with the performance thus far. My highway mileage is closer to 18mpg but daily driving I’ve been around 16. Not too bad for a truck thats over 8500lbs. Once I hit 5-10,000 miles the engine will start to pick up a few mpg . All the parts have to be merried together nice – piston rings seated in the cylinders, etc.

That about wrapps it up! Stay tuned for more improvements/adjustments as I make them.

I just got a new truck on Friday and have been working on getting my FT-857D installed. I won’t get everything done here for a while. My screw driver antenna is going to be coming later. I may get a whole new one for this truck. The one I have right now got ripped off the truck by a tree the weekend before Hamvention so the mount is a bit bent out of shape. It has also been on every vehicle I have driven since I got my drivers license  – may be time to get a new one anyway! In the mean time, I will toss together what I can. Hopefully I can have enough progress and pictures of my install for a post in the next week.

My antenna selection right now is a dual bander on the hood and a whip with a tuner for HF. The hood mount was chosen because I didn’t want to mess with the coax and the door swinging if I mounted it on the top of a door (where I put it on my last truck). It is opening up a whole can of worms with pinched coax and water leakage. The whip and tuner is the same experiment I did on my last truck (check some posts back around this past spring – 2010 – as I documented that one pretty well).

In any event, I have been taking pictures along the way so I will get those up here in another post. Stay tuned for more!

I finished the base kit construction at about 3:30am Monday morning. This includes the first run at the bandpass filter alignment.

There is still a bit of work to be done on the base rig itself. I need to put the radio on some test equipment to fine tune the bandpass filters. I originally was having an issue with 17m only not tuning, however now that I have gone back in and played around with it I knocked 15m out of whack too.

The way the higher frequency (30m+) bands work is the tuned inductors are shared with two bands. The inductors resonate the higher frequency band of the two and then there is a set of trimmer capacitors that resonate the lower frequency inductors to a higher frequency. All that happens when you change bands is different circuits are switched in and out of use with relays. For example – 17 meters uses the inductors from 15 meters with the extra capacitance added in from the capacitor bank. 15 meters must be tuned first and then the caps for 17 meters are tuned – they don’t affect the tuning for 15 meters because they are not in line when that band is active.

There is something goofy with 15 and 17 meters. I may have one of the trimmer caps in backwards. However, I installed them on the board in the orientation that fit the outline on the board the best (tapered end on one side, both edges of the caps were flat for the 12m and 17m bank so I went off the component shape/board outline and not what the manual said about the “flat edges”).

The next issue that needs resolved is the front panel buttons on the right of the display seem to have acquired the functions of the buttons on the left side. For example: the filter button acts like the band – button and the pre/att button acts like the display button. Weird, and it doesn’t happen all the time – just most of the time.

All of that said, the K2 has made two QSO’s so far! One on 20 meters and the other one on 40 meters. I need to get some more radio time with it….

In the end it took me 13 days to get my first QSO! The kit was a lot of fun to build, a lot of work, and a bit of a head-banging session to figure out what I did wrong. The best part about it is – doing the last alignment, tossing the case back together, and see it work!

I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone somewhere along the lines said that building a K2 is one of those great Ham radio experiences that every Amateur radio operator should take advantage of at some point. I would have to agree. To that point, the support of the Amateur radio community on building them is tremendous. I am surprised with how many people locally have built them – and MULTIPLE K2’s at that. Three of my friends here have built at least two. That leaves quite a bit of knowledge to be passed down to the newbies!

It took a lot of work, several breaks, dinner, and a beer but I plowed through and got to the second alignment! So far everything looks OK. Playing with the internal frequency counter is pretty cool! I will set everything as best I can for now until I can get to a test lab to dial everything in perfect.

Winding the toroids wasn’t much of a pain. I have heard people say they hate winding toroids but it wasn’t bad at all. In the past I have wound some baluns, but nothing going inside a radio.

One part I didn’t like about the second stage of the RF Board assembly was mounting components on the bottom. Just about all of them needed the leads cut first. This chewed up a lot more time and was very tedious. Soldering them became another issue. The clearence between the components already installed on the top made it impossible to get to the pads without touching other components, let alone getting solder in there. My method was to do a solder transfer by putting a blob on the iron. After I got the part locked in place I soldered the other side – getting creative on snaking the solder between the components. Then I went back and re-melted the solder on the first lead and let some fresh solder flow in with some flux. Even still, some of them I soldered from the component side just in case – the solder didn’t flow through the hole to the other side in several cases.

Here is a picture just before I started the alignment. The RF Board is becoming populated!

Note the PLL Upgrade board near the top left corner (next to the Control Board) of the RF Board in the picture. It is a tan strip just above the yellow test point. After my friend mentioned this board was really hard to get in I took that in to account when I did this section. The manual has you install this part in place of RP3, which goes in before the components behind. Because of the size of the board, components, and leads I decided to put the components on the RF Board on before I put the PLL Upgrade board in place. I had to skip ahead a couple pages to get to the inductor instructions but I think it made things a LOT easier!

Well, it is after 3am so I better go to sleep. I still have more of the alignment process to do. I was too tired to finish it.

I am about half way through the work on the second stage of the RF Board assembly. I need a break!

Last night I got up to the large capacitor installation. I didn’t count the parts, but I would venture to say there are between 100 and 150 capacitors in this one segment. The manual has you install the parts in a set sequence. For example – all the resistor strips, one per board, have the resistors in the exact sequence that the instructions have you put them in. This is REALLY nice because the next one to go in is right in line – no parts hunting. However, the capacitors are NOT in order like this.

In fact, the capacitors are spread through about 5 different bags and envelopes. When I did my parts inventory I did think ahead a little bit and I marked down the components with a symbol (star, x, check mark, etc) to identify WHICH of the packages the part is in. In theory, this should have worked. However, as I am building the kit it is really irritating to go between the directions and the appendix to figure out where the parts are. When there are a hundred parts it means about that many trips back to the appendix to find where it is.

The directions do say to organize the capacitors by value before starting. This is all well and good, but there are a LOT of different values. Some common ones (labeled with a 103 and 102) are in their own envelope, so this helps.

My strategy for this section was to find all the high-count parts (the 102’s and 103’s) and do those first, rather than install the parts in the order described in the manual. I got all the high-count’s done last night. After that, I filled in the holes in the list hunting the parts down. It took me 2 and a half hours to do put in about 30 parts! Part of the challenge here is the type of capacitors. There are about 4 different types and a wide variety of sizes. If the manual could mark the capacitors with another letter/code to correspond to the type that would make things a little easier in hunting down the part.

After the capacitors were done I moved on to the IC’s, then the crystals. All in all I have worked about 4 and a half hours. Time to rest up a bit before I go back at it.

Keeping a clear head is the best way to do it otherwise you make mistakes. I’ve already made one – I put an IC in backwards – so I have been pretty careful with my work since. IC’s for example – I solder ONE pin to hold it, flip the board around, double check the orientation (based on the NOTCH!) of the IC, and then solder the rest of the pins – every time. It add’s time to the construction, but what I loose now I will more than make up for if I factor in a coule re-work jobs spinning IC’s around.  

My goal is to get to the second alignment by tomorrow mid-day, if not tonight. I don’t know how late I will stay up working tonight.

I hit a rough road when I turned the rig on for the first time. I got the processor initialized and then realized the controls didn’t work. After a few days of trouble shooting and bouncing ideas off of the guys at Elecraft and some friends that have K2’s I wasn’t getting anywhere. So I had a friend of mine look the radio over last night. After rolling through the resistance checks (as described at the end of the sections) again, on a different meter, we didn’t come up with a whole lot. Everything checked out fine.

We then moved on to swapping circuit boards for some good old “swapnostics”. After some poking around we traced the problem to the front panel.

Earlier yesterday I found the voltage tables in an Appendix in the back of the manual. We were going to move on to this chart and roll through the list but we took a break for a while. As soon as we went back to the trouble shooting my friend found the problem, almost immediately. U4 on the front panel was in backwards! We didn’t even plug it back in and power it up before the problem was found.

I had probably scanned over this about 10 times during my checks and never saw it. U4 has a circle on the top on the opposite end of the chip as the notch. For some reason I had it backwards and put the circle where the notch was supposed to go. It would have taken me for ever to realize that one! Oh well, live and learn.

U4 also happens to be a 20 pin IC. The desoldering iron at my friends place doesn’t work real well so I used some of my solder wick. Let me tell you – if you don’t have to desolder a 20 pin IC with solder wick, don’t! I wanted to save the chip, though, and I have had formal training in rework (2 IPC certifications, 1 PACE Wordwide for thru hole components and board repair) so I figured I could do it. After an hour and a half the chip came out – with no pads and no plated thru holes missing from the board! Some of the pins I had to reflow solder to and pull back out with the wick so I could get enough solder removed to knock the pins loose. That sure sounds like an oxymoron – add solder to remove solder? It works and sometimes lots of methods are worth a shot - if the alternative is to cut a part off why not try to save it? It was a real chore though.

Tip for future builders: Pay attention to the NOTCH on the IC’s, not the other markings! Unless pin 1 is dotted (or a notch and a dot on pin 1, that would be harder to screw up).  

After getting the chip out I put in a socket just in case. This way the chip can be changed if need-be. You never know if the heat damaged anything. Though, the supply voltage went to a dead pin when the chip was flipped. Its fixed now so thats the important thing!

Speaking of it being fixed, I finished up Part 1 of the RF Board assembly this evening! After getting the issue resolved last night I didn’t do a whole lot. I figured a good goal for tonight would be to make it to the second stage of the RF Board assembly and I did!

Tonight’s work: build the voltage probe, signal probe, and frequency counter probe; adjust the CW side tone; check the menu navigation; calibrate the AGC, and calibrate the S-meter.

It feels really good to see some of the radio working! What is really COOL about this kit is the included test gear. The radio has it’s own test gear built in – including a volt meter! If you wanted to risk it you could theoretically build the K2 without a DMM, as long as it goes together without a hitch (I don’t recommend you try).

Here is a picture of the voltage/current metering. The thin black wire that loops around the right side of the circuit board is the voltage probe. It connects with a two pin plug to the control board right behind the keypad. A jumper next to the plug selects the voltage source between the probe and the input voltage to the radio. The current meter reads the draw from the radio. I have seen about 80mA from it with the backlighting turned off. I am curious as to what it goes to when the receiver is running with a bit of audio. That is a LOT less than my FT-857D at 650mA!!

 This is a picture I took a few days ago right around when I turned it on for the first time. This is what it will look like when it is all done! I know, there are thousands of these out there and they all look the same. It is neat to see one you build take shape though.

Next up – build Stage 2 of the RF Board. After that I will see if I can dial in the receiver with some lab equipment – signal generator, etc.

 am taking a break from my project so I can write up a little here. Ever since I got the kit I haven’t spent a whole lot of time to do anything else!

My K2 serial number is 6950. I guess Elecraft has made quite a few of these! Based on the comments others say about them its no wonder – they are fantastic radios.

As of this writing (roughly 4:00pm on Saturday May 22) I have the front panel done and the control board (except for one cap). I have started in on the RF board construction, but I haven’t soldered anything yet. My next immediate goal is to finish inventory. I really wanted to start melting solder so I took inventory of the control board first and then built it the same day. I didn’t go through inventory of the whole kit.

My theory on the inventory now is I better get it done. I don’t want to get to the end of the kit and realize there is a part missing that keeps me from finishing. I would rather put in a list of parts I am missing now and have the rest of the kit to build while I wait than have to wait that much longer at the end.

That said, I have done inventory so far on the following sections/packs: RF pack A, Control, Front Panel, KSB2 (optional), Miscellaneous (hardware, some jacks, allen wrenches), and Wire. The only component as of yet that is missing is 1 of 3 .0027uF #272’s on the Control Board.

RF pack B will be interesting. The whole thing is packed full of resistors, capacitors, and toroids. The other packs had some larger components – blocks holding IC’s, buttons, pots, knobs, etc. When you have bulky objects there aren’t as many that can fit in a bag. When you have smaller components you can pack a LOT in to one bag!

So here are some pictures of my build so far:

(click on them to enlarge)

Note #6950 in the upper right of the box.

Here is my first component! R5 on the left side. Yes, I did break away from the assembly instructions. You are supposed to do the soldering in sections. Oh well. I wanted the shot!

Here is about everything I have done up to this point. The front panel is done and everything on the control board (except for the one cap) is done. I installed the SSB components on the front panel before I assembled it (page 29 in the manual).

When I was doing my resistance check at the end of the component install on the front panel I found an unsoldered joint. It was pin 1 on U1’s socket (the control IC for the LCD display). This, of course, was after I had already installed the back light panel for the LCD and the LCD itself. U1 and it’s socket mount on the bottom of the board. The pins are soldered on the top – RIGHT UNDERNEATH THE LCD AND BACKLIGHT BOARDS!!! So, needless to say this was just a tad bit aggravating. The pins are soldered before the rest of the components go together for a reason.

It took several tries and swapping soldering irons to one with a thinner/longer tip than the one on the table there to get it, but I did. I put a blob of solder on the tip of the iron and slipped it between the circuit board and the back of the LCD back lighting panel.

Build note to future builders of K2’s – CHECK ALL PINS OF U1 BEFORE SOLDERING LCD BACKLIGHTING AND LCD SCREEN IN PLACE!

Overall, this kit is a blast to build! I am anxious to get it on the air for sure. It isn’t a kit you can rush, though, so if you are going to build one set aside some time. Work through the manual in the order it is written. I find I don’t have to look at the manual the entire time, I have skipped ahead a little bit here and there. However, there are build notes in there that you need to be aware of so be careful!

I will post back with another section of my build as I get to it.

I don’t have a whole lot of time this morning to post, but I figured I would chime in as to my activities.

Read the bottom of the last post for more info on Hamvention and the K2.

The kits I got are the K2, KSB2, and K160RX. So far the only thing I am missing is a cap, one of three .0027uH #272’s for the control board. I haven’t taken inventory of the options and the two packs of RF deck parts yet. Everything else has been accounted for, and quite a bit of it already used!

I will post back, maybe sometime tonight or over the weekend, with some pictures.

I have the control board pretty much done except for the last cap and going over the test points again. Last night I got as far as I could with it and then moved on to the front panel. I quit on page 29 in the manual where it asks for the KSB2 parts (if you have it, which I do). I figure that was a good place to stop since it was about 11:30. It is pretty easy to loose track of time working on this kit!

Elecraft has done a wonderful job with the kit. I had pretty high expectations from friends that have and have built Elecraft rigs. The quality and layout has most certainly lived up to the hype! I will enjoy this build and can’t wait to put it on the air!

If you are in the market for a nice kit radio I would highly reccomend the K2. I am not an “expert” builder but I have done a lot of solder melting. If you can read you can build this kit! Taking your time will pay off, there are a lot of notes, tips, cautions, etc to be aware of. What helps me is  read 3-4 steps ahead so I know what the process is rather than read a step, do, read a step, do, read a step, do…. Sometimes I jump ahead of the soldering sessions. I plug my iron in when I get to the end of the section, install the next batch of parts, and stretch out my soldering session. It all depends on the layout of the build though – you can’t do that with every section due to parts clearences or other assembly characteristics.

More later…