I thought it looked like a radio before

In my last post I mentioned that it was starting to look like a radio. I really should have looked forward in the manual a little, because the next few pages really does turn it into a radio, with the side panels and front panel all attached to the main RF board. And best of all, it has passed its second smoke test as power has been applied with the front panel attached. The display works, and I've tested the audio, side tone, and even set the side tone frequency. The pictures are worth a thousand words though, check them out! Don't let the E42 bother you, that is a VFO error and the VFO isn't done yet.

K1 Powered On!


View from the top - RF board

It passed the smoke test!

The Elecraft K1 kit passed the smoke test today, the smoke test being when power is applied, you don't see or smell any smoke, nor does anything really heat up. I had to wind another toroidal inductor and two toroidal transformers. They are the round things wrapped in wire and pretty tough to make, but mine seem to have turned out nice. The crystals have been installed on the board, those are the large silver things. They are tough because you need to solder a small wire to the top of them to ground them to the board. Some major components have been installed that are starting to make it look like a radio, the antenna connector, headphone jack, & key jack. I sure am looking forward to getting on the air with this radio!

RF Board Top


RF Board Bottom

It has been three months...

It has been three months since I worked on my Elecraft K1 Transceiver Kit, but it came out of the box after dinner this evening and the build continued. I made a lot of progress on the RF board, I might even be about half way done with it! I did have a lot of trouble taking the pictures for the blog posting though. I'm not sure why, either they turned out too dark, or there was too much flash reflection. You'll see the horrible picture of the bottom of the RF board, which is the best out of eleven pictures I took.

RF Board Top


RF Board Bottom

Stale Potato Chips - No Problem

We've had this bag of ruffled potato chips around for a while, so long that they are passed their "best if used by" date. They do taste a little old, but they can be made better than new by adding some Old Bay. That basically makes them crab chips, and totally takes the staleness away. Yeah, I'm cheap, but hey, they are good!

Walkie Talkies are Great!

Robin bought Alex a set of spider-man FRS walkie talkies for Christmas. Tonight I decided it would be great to find them, give one to Alex and go back upstairs. A few seconds later I asked him if he could bring me up a cold Mountain Dew from the kitchen and he was ecstatically happy about it. Then a few minutes later, Amy asked him to bring her up a cold Coke. He didn't seem as happy, but he was sure to let us know that it was the last one in the refrigerator.

New Title Pics for Amy & Alex

I was looking around my Picasa albums and found a more recent picture of Alex and Amy to add to the title row. I liked the picture of Alex holding Aidan, but that was over two years ago now. I should probably get another picture of Andrew up there too, maybe later today. Of course, there are new pictures of me, but I look the same, just a little less hair.

The old pics:
Amy & Alex

New Zoe & Aidan Title Pics

Aidan & Zoe's pictures in my title bar were pretty old. They both look pretty different than they did more than a year ago. I have a new pic of Alex on the camera but the batteries are dead right now. Behind the scenes, I'm moving the new pics to my Picasa site.

Here are some older title pics:
Aidan, Zoe, and Aidan again