All alignment went just as described in manual, and everything works just as advertised. The receiver is quite sensitive, and even without AGC it is easy to operate weak and strong stations. I have about 220kc of tuning range from 7.070 to 7.290.

The challenge is the VFO drift - even though I leave the set on all the time with volume turned down to silent, the drift is so severe that I must re-tune at least every 10-15 seconds during an attempted QSO or I drift so far off frequency that when I un-key - the other station is often gone, moved out of my passband. Never dreamed the drift would be this bad.

I have the replacement resistors for the VFO, and that will be next. I may try some of the other suggested changes just to further my own learning experience with this simple and elegant design.

But I have also ordered the DDS VFO parts!