Hello Elecrafters,
Just a quick note of succes. Finally getting around to completing my
K2 and a high efficiency linear power supply took a bit longer than
anticipated, even though I haven't put that many hours into the
project. The only real trouble encountered during building and tuning
was that I initially had a very high SWR when testing the TX a few days
ago. That problem was eventually traced to a short in a connector to
the dummy load. *Cough*
This evening I literally threw the end of a 3m/10ft piece of wire out
the window (I live in an appartment) and connected it to the K2 through
my trusty FC-901 tuner. I have so far not given the K2 the Spectrogram
treatment, yet initial impressions of the RX are extremely favorable. I
have of course played with the RX before during testing, but today was
the first time I really spent some time with it.
First stateside station heard was W8FJ on 14,025, and he was armchair
copy to say the least.
First lesson learned about the Elecraft mojo is that most of the time
the K2 doesn't need the preamp. On 20 and below it just adds excessive
noise.
Only regrets so far are that I wish I had built the PSU into an EC2
to match the K2.
Tomorrow I expect to get a suitably large piece of insulated tubing
to use as a form for a large current choke, so that I may build a
properly balanced antenna. Then it will be time for the first QSO,
which I have reserved for my Elmer, OZ7NB.
73 de Frank, OZ1IOC. K2 #4538.
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