At last my KPA-500, serial # 188, amp is a goer. But what a saga. I ordered the amp on 12 April 2011. It finally shipped from Watsonville on 13 July 2011. That's when the fun began, 3 days from the US to Australia then 3 weeks or so to clear Aussie customs and finally arrive at my QTH.
Upon opening the carton and doing an inventory check I found that I was missing quite a few screws, in particular the ones that fasten the the case sections together. I contacted Elecraft and was advised that they will send the missing screws immediately. I assembled the unit as much as I could then waited and waited for the very small envelope containing the missing screws to arrive from Watsonville from where they were posted on 8 August. The envelope arrived today 22 August. I finished assembly and am pleased to say that all systems are go. The amp works as designed and reports to date are very positive. I am driving the amp witha IC 756 Pr03. (Maybe a K3 soon) One other problem I encountered was that I found one leg of a 3K resistor on the power supply board was broken off, a simple job to resolder it into place. All in all, I am happy with the unit and with the support from Elecraft, but would strongly suggest that, particularly, with overseas orders they ensure that there are no missing parts as the time it takes to get even just a few screws replaced can be weeks, not a problem on mainland US but international post can be quite often described, as it is here in OZ, as "SNAIL-MAIL" I am waiting for the KAT-500 to be released, I imagine it will be available both in kit form and factory assembled. Yes I am slowly building the K-LINE in reverse Hi Hi cheers and 73 Dale VK4DMC / VK4SIX ______________________________________________________________ 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
