Hello, everybody.
If you care about the impressions of a first-time builder, here are my
notes and questions regarding the receiver assembly part:
-page 30, finding inductors: all inductors' colors match, save for L7
that is really org-vio-gold (two people pronounced it "definitely
orange") instead of yel-vio-gold. Is it a packing error or a
documentation error? Should I ask Elecraft for a new inductor? Mind you,
I have performed a full inventory of every single part, taking care not
to mix inductors and resistances and and this is the only odd bit that I
have found.
-page 38, installation of X5: in page 21 (X1 installation), the warning
about too much solder flowing through the holes must have made quite an
impression on my inexperienced mind because when the time came to
install X5 I promptly had a cow upon finding that one of the pins was
shorted to ground... I removed it, cleaned the pads, reinstalled it
and... again shorted to ground... then I did what I should have done
earlier and checked the schematics... and felt very very stupid 8-P
On a related note, how much clearance is there between the crystals and
the battery packs? My crystals are not as well-aligned as those of other
builders and I soldered the ground wire on the side rather than on top,
per instructions.
-page 47, receive current drain test: text states typical receive drain
is 32mA; the included errata sheet instructs the builder to correct the
figure (35mA) on the specifications page, but not here. Display
brightness at 2 gives 35mA and the only thing that saved me from another
silly have-a-cow situation was good memory. Ok, I know: it's a trivial
mistake but it also is rather easy to fix in future releases of the
documentation 8-)
All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with the results and even toroids were
not that big deal I thought they would be: I used a short scrap to try
out the three stripping methods and settled for sandpaper alone (wound
toroids both had 0.3 ohms for a 13in/33cm wire). Far trickier for me was
the "piggyback" installation of C56 and R32! Alignments and tests went fine.
Parroting a well-known commercial: "KX1: 360 EUR; Getting it to work
after one full day of assembly and many mistakes: priceless!"
Pictures are available here (no fancy graphics here, sorry):
http://andrea.borgia.bo.it/kx1
B73,
Andrea.
--
Homepage: http://andrea.borgia.bo.it / Amateur radio: IZ4FHT
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
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