Here’s my newly constructed Elecraft K1 for 40, 30, 20, and 15 meters.  It’s a remarkable little package!  The K1 puts out as much as 7 watts or as little as 100 mw – operator’s choice!  The receiver is impressively quiet and sensitive.  It could hear the same weak signals as my K2 and K3.  The K1 has a very extensive menu of features yet remains among the most user-friendly rigs on the market.  It is different from the KX-1 in that the receiver is more sensitive with a lower noise level, the transmitter is twice as powerful, the internal ATU matches a much wider range of impedances, and it has a very effective noise blanker which the KX-1 does not even have as an option.  Although the K1 is  marketed as a “portable” transceiver, it could very easily be the one and only fixed station rig for the ham with a limited budget but a discriminating taste.  Putting it together was straightforward.  It is a densely populated package once built but since the top, bottom, sides, and front come off there is actually plenty of room for fat fingers during actual construction.  My first contact was with Gene, UA1CE, in St. Petersburg, Russia at the 5 watt power level with a RST 559 on 20 meters.  Later that evening, the K1 proved its mettle as I used it for the 2 hour NAQCC Sprint.  Overall, a very high quality transceiver for the money and cute to boot!  Here are a couple of pictures showing the layers of circuitry and the size relative to my hand.  Anyone interested can visit www.elecraft.com  .