I got started with the inventory around 08:30 and spent almost 1.5 hours, taking my time. I only found that I was missing 2 1/4" black pan head screws. I used a couple of 3/16" screws in their place and emailed Elecraft for replacements. The folks at Elecraft did a great job packaging this radio. It was very well protected mechanically and electro statically. It was also very well organized in manageable bags that were easy to locate as each step is performed in assembly.

With all the hype around the performance numbers, it was a nice surprise to see how well mechanically engineered this radio is put together. There are some very tight tolerances in this box and it was a joy assembling it and seeing the end result. All of the PC boards are very well put together and plug into the RF board perfectly. I did have some problems with trying to get the front panel PCB mounted to the front panel. It is very tight trying to get all of the controls and led's into those tight spots. I had to ever carefully bend two of the led's over the PWR and CMP control in order to get them to line up with the holes properly. After a couple of tries, it went together nicely.

The only other problems I had were self inflicted. I applied a little too much torque to a jack screw on the back and snapped it off in the connector. I removed the KIO3 board and was able to remove the remaining portion of the screw. Fortunately, I had another one lying around and replaced it before moving on. The second was when installing the KPA3 I inadvertently crushed transistor Q9 on the edge of the board near the connectors that mate with the KPA3IO board. I did this even after receiving and email from Larry Phipps, N8LP, telling me he did the same thing. I was able to bend it back up and all works well. I found the problem after I noticed that in receive mode, when I dialed the power knob above 12 watts where the relays would put the KPA3 incline, my audio and S-meter dropped in level. I saw it drop 4 S units (guessing around 24db). After I straightened out Q9 and reinstalled the KPA3 board, all worked as normal.

All in all, I completed the basic K3 in about 5.5 hours. The documentation was superb and the assembly flowed very well (with the exception of my jack screw man-handling). If there was any question about an instruction, there was a picture and explanation to back it up, making every step clear and concise. In fact, I did not get much sleep in the previous 48 hours and probably should have put off the build, but even though I was not totally with it, the clear and concise instructions pulled me through without a hitch.

After assembling the basic K3 and following the calibration procedures (all worked as advertised), I assembled the KPA3 100w amp and installed it in the K3. After playing around with it for a little while trying to figure out some of the operation, I quit for the day and took my wife out for dinner. In all, I inventoried and assembled the kit in about 8.5 hours or so and played around for a couple of hours. I did download the firmware update utility and run it. It worked flawlessly and updated my firmware within minutes to the latest versions. Now I can concentrate on learning all about K3 #338.