Stalled due to limited time availability. Turing RK1 Neural Processing Unit arrived. Waiting for the dedicated ITX case to be released. Honestly not exactly certain what to do with the cluster. Interested in “Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations.” Yet not certain I have an actual application worthy of the efforts. Wondering if I really have […]

The K9ZW Turing Pi Cluster computer is getting an upgrade, and the upgrade features Neural Processing Unit (NPU) capabilities.   I’ve been puttering with a homelab Pi cluster – see: https://k9zw.wordpress.com/?s=turing The Turing Pi folks were developing their own SBC (Single Board Computer) featuring advanced Neural Processing (for a SBC) capabilities, and when a pre-order […]

I thought the photo taken below was sort of cool.  My KF4D on the bottom, and my K1 on the top!  I built the K1 as a 2-band kit near the end of its availability back in 2016.  I haven’t used it much, it was mostly just a fun kit building experience.

Yesterday I got it out of its box and made a couple of contacts.  Not that I’d forgotten how challenging it is to make QRP contacts, but I certainly wasn’t used to waiting in a pileup for dozens of calls anymore.  Still, it was nice to make a few POTA K-10000+ contacts on low power.

We should have made a formal announcement here. Yes, we discontinued it because certain parts are hard to come by now, making it no longer cost effective for us to manufacture.
It was a great product for us, and I used mine for years, taking it on many trips. I thought of it as a “Sierra on Steroids” at the time (referring to an earlier design I did for the NorCal QRP Club). But we’ve moved on to more versatile field radios, including the KX2 and KX3.
73,
Wayne
N6KR

This news meets me with mixed feelings.  The K1 is the radio that started Elecraft - well technically it existed before Elecraft even.  To see it go certainly strengthens the signals we've been seeing from Elecraft for several years now, since the introduction of the K3.  I certainly hope that they continue to offer piece-part kits as long as it is possible. 

However, I will admit, I am no raving fan of the K1 as a radio - I have built one and I did not find it to perform very well with a fairly drifty VFO and weak filtering.  For the price, it is too much toy and not enough radio.  Still, it was one of the first kits many hams have had the pleasure of putting on the air so I can see the draw. 

Now Tom's blog noted that the KX1 was also on the chopping block but I did not see any evidence of this on Elecraft's site, as they are still selling the KX1 from stock, but I have not gone in and researched if there was further discussion in the thread Wayne posted on.  In my opinion, the KX1 is far superior in performance and operation to the K1 and it would be a shame to see it go from the list of offerings.