Hello all, It looks like it may have been several years since I said anything here. so....
I built 5087 and the tuner as well as an AMQRP Micro908 in late 2005, I think. After some cavorting with a stray ground line on an Icom VHF hand mike, I was up and running - getting my tech, General and 5 wpm the same day. i didn't know anything but thought I would need HF on our boat and read a write-up on the K2 in a QST i found in a laundry. It was an obvious choice for this old heathkit and Dynakit hi-fi builder. It has worked wonderfully well, far beyond my expectations and to the astonishment of some of the DXers I've worked SSB, mostly on 20 meters. Antenna is a shakespeare 23 foot Marine ssb whip, grounding is reached by 3/4 inch copper pipe down to the bilge where this backbone is connected by copper tape to the engine, a through-hull, and the stainless steel rudder shaft. The only mod to the K2 has been to replace the screws with stainless ones - radio looks a bit Russian (no offense to Russia) and there have been no corrosion problems at all after 5 years on a boat in saltwater. I did have two or 3 zaps from static discharge all in the Bohemia River in northeast chesapeake bay. different years too. i sent radio to Gary after the second one (first strike only zapped the bridge diodes in tuner and k2)because i wasn't sure what limit of damage was this time. At same time I built an antenna to ground shunt with a big torroid set up as a 1 Millihenry inductor -- no more problems since then. There seems to have been no drift and no further problems of any kind - it just works. Regrettably, this fine performance doesn't justify stepping up to a K3. I might add that i received a considerable amount of help here when I was getting started with this or when I encountered something that i couldn't understand including much off-line correspondence with several people I see still active here. The K2, by the way is an excellent boat radio since it is much less sensitive to voltage than most other ham sets. I seem to get out quite well with input voltages as low as 11 volts. i don't think an Icom 706 can even light it's display with that, much less get out of an anchorage. This was a lucky byproduct of buying the k2, since I had no idea this could be an issue when I bought the kit. So this is to thank everyone who helped me along, and the wonderful Elecraft people. I hope I can talk management into letting me buy the DSP kit. 73 AI4TO John Ferguson M/V Arcadian Marathon, FL until Wednesday, then North to Chesapeake. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
