Hello Herb Welcome to the wacky world of ham radio. There are a lot of old timers here, as well as relative newcomers (less than 40 years :-) ).
You ask a fair question for a newcomer. The truth is a lot less exciting. If you follow the building directions in the manual, it is hard to get into trouble, although not impossible. Most troubles seem to boil down to soldering problems. Overlooked soldering connection, cold solder connection, too much solder allowing a short to an adjacent circuit point. If your soldering skills are at all ecent, you should have no trouble building a K2 or any well-documented kit. These days, the spotlight is on kit manufacturers, and with the internet for instant feedback, when a manual is less than perfect, the world lets the manufacturer know about it. One reason you see a number of posts here discussing problems, is that this is a prime reason for this reflector. If a person does get into trouble, there is a very large commnity of folks who have already built their K2s and are willing to help debug whatever the problem turns out to be. Remember, there are over 4000 K2s out there already. Also, Elecraft monitors the reflector, and if there is a serious problem, it gets addressed. No sluffing off of the problem on the poor customer. Elecraft technical support is outstanding. You only have to ask for help and it is there. In a nutshell, don't be afraid of building a K2. Essentially, the K2 community won't let you fail. If you have any doubts about your soldering skills, I suggest you find some simple kit and build it just for the experience and building up your soldering skills. It really isn't hard at all. Good luck and 73 Bob N6WG K2 s/n 12 _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
