Elecraft KX1: Assembly Parts II & III, Final Assembly and Initial Tests

The second part of the assembly process (receiver section) was completed over the course of two days - I spent a couple of hours on Wednesday night installing the resistors and inductors, and completed the section early Friday evening. I probably spent more time looking at the the inductors under a magnifying glass to make certain I was reading the color bands correctly (did I mention color blindness sucks?). Apparently I did OK, because all of the tests and check at the end of Part II were satisfactory and, upon firing the radio up with a DMM probe stuck in the BNC connector as an antenna, I was able to copy CW signals on both 40m and 20m bands!

Since it was still early, I decided to proceed with Part III, the transmitter section and final assembly. This all went smoothly and quickly, and by 2am I was finished mounting the board in the case and sticking the rubber feet on the bottom. I proudly present Elecraft KX1 S#1763:

I still need to perform the final transmitter tests once I get my hands on a dummy load (the Elecraft DL1, perhaps). For shits and giggles I attached my Diamond RH77 VHF/UHF rubber ducky and tuned around on Saturday night during the IARU HF contest and was able to copy a bunch of stations, though not well enough to hear both sides of any QSO. On Sunday I tested it briefly with the Datong AD-270 active antenna that has been in the attic in Closter since forever, that seemed to work though the receiver gain was still not what I hoped it would be - had to turn AF gain nearly full, and thus got lots of hiss.

This morning I tried it in the Jeep with a 40m hamstick and the Outbacker set for 20m. Both antennas are poorly tuned, probably because of the lack of adequate grounding on the mount. Not much to be heard on 40 other than the growls from the plasma TV which is about 10 ft. from the antenna. Also noted what seemed to be lower gain on 20m. But again, this may be more an indicator of how poor my antenna systems are than anything else; I had to use a PL-259-to-BNC adapter which is of questionable quality. More tests to follow...