K1 Front Panel Assembly

I have decided to order an extra KNB package from QRP Project because it only costs 44€ and they seemed to have it on stock, ie. quick delivery.

Unfortunately, I received an email shortly after I placed the order that the KNB1 is not in stock and has to be ordered from Elecraft. Oh well… I quickly sent an email to Elecraft as well asking for the missing toroid core, so now we’ll see which one arrives first. It’s no problem to have two noise blankers, since I have already planned to build an extra K1 later for the 160 and 80 meter bands.

In the mean time I have started the assembly of the front panel board. I find it really cool that the resistors are placed in the strip in the same order as they have to be mounted.

Everything went fine until I came to the step when the LCD backlight mod has to be applied. It has to be done right after mounting the MCU into it’s socket. Here I got somehow confused, because the very first step in the backlight mod instructions is to remove the MCU again. Hmm… why should I mount it then? I have sent a quick email to the elecraft reflector to ensure that I have not missed anything and I got a quick reply from Tom, N0SS, who is the author of the backlight mod. He explained that this is due to the fact, that the backlight mod was originally inteded for already built K1s. This makes sense, but I still don’t understand why this backlight mod, designed for unbuilt K1s, isn’t applied before mounting the MCU in the first place.

It’s getting late now and so I will continue tomorrow.

PS: I think it’s really cool that the resistors are placed in the strip in the same order as they have to be mounted 🙂