Here's another thought that perhaps one of us could put together:
give up the internal battery space for a considerably larger filter board
that could be used to allow room for additional "2 band" style filters
that don't share components (and, thus, don't need high-tolerance parts).
No new parts would be needed; the existing 2-band parts kits, and the
controller from the 4-band board would serve.
This would also open the door for selecting a completely arbitrary
set of four bands (eg 15/20/40/80) as the filters would, again, be
completely independent of each other.
I'll have to give mine a close look for mechanical feasibility when I
get home. -kb7psg
On Thu, 17 Jul 2014, Wayne Burdick wrote:
The 4-band module requires extremely low-temperature-coefficient trimmer
capacitors because of its narrow-band pre-mix and RF band-pass filters.
The last source for these exotic trimmers dried up recently. A redesign
using higher-TC trimmers might be possible, but the filters would end up
being triple-tuned, which would force the use of SMD components
throughout, and tuning the filters would then be very difficult without
a spectrum analyzer.
Sales volume for the K1 has decreased in recent years due to the KX1
(which is smaller and has a DDS VFO), and the KX3 (which covers all
bands, all modes, with up to 12 W output and has a much more capable
auto tuner, nicer user interface, etc.). So the cost of a redesign
wouldn't be recovered.
That said, for the time being we're continuing to offer the two-band
version and the other options (KAT1 ATU, KBT1 battery pack, etc.). The
K1 is one of our "full" kits, and has a bit of a fan club of its own.
We'll update the website to reflect the change in option availability.
73,
Wayne
N6KR
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