Summer 2003 Issue

If you’re anything like me, one of the main hurdles of building your equipment is making the finished item look good. Some of the recent articles in various UK magazines are a credit to their builders in that the finished item not only looked good enough for the shack bench, they also performed well. I could always get a piece of equipment working, but it was never the object of joy I wanted it to be because the finished item was never as good looking as a commercial item, which was a shame!

Those of you who remember the Heathkit days will recall the attention that was paid to the enclosures, which were supplied with the kits. They made that homebuilt equipment look good enough for the shack. Although many of these kits were built by amateurs a number of years ago, much of this equipment continues to sell well on the second-hand market.

This memory sprang to mind some years ago when I first came across the web page of the Elecraft Company of America and one of its featured items, the K2 HF transceiver project. The company is run by Eric Swartz, WA6HHQ, and Wayne Burdick, N6KR, both very active amateur radio operators. Their flagship HF transceiver, the K2, is designed not only to compete, and indeed beat, the top HF radios on the market today in terms of performance and capabilities, but also to look as good as commercial radios while still being built at home as a kit by the average amateur. “Impossible!” I hear you say. Well, it’s not impossible. Having built and operated one, I can assure you that it’s every bit as good as the Elecraft web pages say it is!

What does the K2 have to do with VHF? For many years I have used one as a transverter driver for my VHF/UHF and microwave transverters, allowing me to have a VHF transceiver with all the excellent functionality found on a normal HF radio. Elecraft has risen to the challenge again, now offering a variety of high-performance transverters as part of their excellent line, which will be discussed later.

The K2 System

What’s the K2 all about? Some years ago, Wayne and Eric decided that they wanted to design a kit transceiver along the lines of the old Heath designs, but they wanted it to perform better than modern-day radios. Still, they wanted the kit to be able to be built, aligned, and tested by using simple equipment in the shack at home. Slowly but surely they grew the K2 concept until its launch in 1999. Since then the K2 has continued to grow and develop. Along with its little sister, the K1, many hundreds of units have been sold around the globe. The K2’s performance and capabilities put it among the highest performing radios available on the market today. This small box is a powerful little radio that packs a real punch. It gives the top-of-the-line HF radios such as the FT1000 a real run for their money, as I will demonstrate later.

The K2 system—and it really is a “system”—is based on the basic HF transceiver, which provides a fully functional, 80–10 meter amateur band, HF QRP CW transceiver. The system allows you to mix and match the functions and capabilities you need. Therefore, if you’re interested in QRP CW only, the basic radio will suit you. The system also allows expansion of the radio by adding additional plug-in modules such as an SSB generator, 100-watt solid-state PA, noise blanker, audio and DSP filters, RS232 interfaces, internal gel-cell batteries for portable operation, and a range of internal and external automatic ATUs and transverter units. By selecting the units that you need, the radio can be tailored to your individual requirements.
 

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