2008 ARRL June VHF QSO Party

Kind of a small showing on my part.

The grid map shows the 6m locations that I worked.

K2 - Night Eighteen

After about 2 days of going in circles trying to track down my alignment problem.
I talked with Scott and emailed Gary at Elecraft a couple of times. After a bunch
of troubleshooting I decided that T5 seemed like the only thing left.



After a visual inspection it looked ok but I decided to remove it and rewind
it anyway. That seemed to be the magic needed to make the VFO circuit work properly.

The rest of the alignment pieces checked out so I am headed onto the next build phase.
There is a VHF contest this weekend plus some family stuff going on so I don't think
that I will get back to the K2 project until Sunday night or Monday night.

Almost 2 inches of rain for 6/11/2008

We had about 1 7/8 inches of rain in the rain gauge for yesterday. Living on top of
the hill the rain is not really that big of a deal. The grass and rock landscaping
seems to be doing it's job pretty well.

K2 - Evening Seventeen

This should have been posted yesterday but my site was moving to another server so I did not want to post while things were in-flight.



I am having some problems with the Testing and Alignment Phase.  It seems like
the VFO feedback is telling the VFO that it needs to go lower. My R16 and R30 voltages
are not reading properly. I have been working with Scott and Gary at Elecraft trying
to trouble shoot this. So far we are still testing.

Testing...

Moving from the old server to the new server... testing.

K2 - Day Sixteen

While the family was in the metro I spent the afternoon working on the K2. A lot of
the inductors are now in place, some of the filters, and some of RF chokes.



I am ready to begin the next section of alignment and testing. When I apply power
I initially hear the the relays move but then nothing else. The main display does
not power up.



I am not sure what the problem is. I don't see any shorts. I don't see any missed
soldier connections. As I initial trace the 14vdc it appears that there is power on
the RF board. All of resistance tests check out.

Hmmmm.... I need to scratch my head and think about this a bit.

K2 - Evening Fiften

This is post is a couple of days late since there was some web server maintenance going on.



I spent about an hour or so working on the caps and inductors on the main RF
board.

Roo Season

I spent some time tonight flushing the bleach water from fresh water tank and then
putting in the water filter. The fresh water system is now ready to go. The black
water tank has the toilet chemicals dumped into the tank. I have the fridge/freezer
running with ice cubes in the freezer.

Tomorrow afternoon I need to spend a few minutes chasing down a slight gas smell from
near the valve of the LP tanks. I need some sunlight so that I can spray down the
fittings and look for little bubbles.



Once that is completed we are ready to load clothes, linens, and food.

Rockwood Roo 23B Mods

I built some nice shelves for two of the cabinets in the trailer. It was a little challenging to design since there is a limited amount of places to attach to for support. The project looks pretty nice now that it is done. The remain step is to remove the piece of trim & stain it and then put it back into place.



Overall it took about 5.5 hours on Sunday since I had to scratch build it a piece
at a time.

K2 - Day Fourteen

I spent about 3 hours today working on installing caps and ICs. It was a bunch of
busy work so that I can get to the next major task: the toroids.

I started the first couple of toroids before supper tonight. They actually go pretty
quickly. I think that I completed 3 of them in about 30 minutes or so.



I have not been spending much time work on the K2 project lately. I am starting to
get nervous about having it done and ready for Field Day. I am going to need to start
working on the project a couple of nights per week to get back on track.