Elecraft K2 - Serial Number 007239 Build. Day 2

Hours 2:58:00    Total Build Time:   6:44:00

Instruction Manual showing installation of the electrolytic Capacitors

Its Saturday and Day 2 of the Elecraft K2 build.  Today I continued working on the "Control Board".  The day started out on pg. 16 installing the electrolytic capacitors as shown in the instructions below.  The instructions have been very good up to this point.  I had one question yesterday when installing the fixed capacitors wondering if "C44" was going to be installed.  I looked ahead in the manual and at the end of construction of the Control Board it mentioned that C44 was not used.  It would have been nice to know at the step where the fixed capacitors were installed that C44 was not going to be used.

Installing the first electrolytic capacitor

At this point, special attention has to be paid to the polarity of the electrolytic capacitors so they don't get installed wrong.  You might have the right capacitor for the position but still install it wrong.

The instructions up to this point have you load several components on the board before soldering them into position.  I decided that after loading 3 or 4 components I would then take a break and solder them and trim the leads.  I know that doing it that way is not the quickest but it was easier to solder when there weren't as many component leads in the way.  Anyway, this isn't a race to get it done.

After the electrolytic capacitors were installed along with an adjustable capacitor, the transistors were installed.

A trimmer capacitor installed next to crystal X2. 

Installing the transistors

Installed transistors

Progress on Control Board, Saturday 29 October, 2011.

Voltage regulators.  It is important to get these in the correct position!!  After looking at this photo, I am going to touch up the soldering job for the regulators on the top side of the board

Oscillator crystal X1 with ground attached

Main 40 pin processor socket installed

At the end of the day, I finished up on page 18 after finishing the installation of P5 and P6.