Level 2, OK I'll Do The Easy Stuff: Take the screws out of the cover, take the screws out of the interior shield, and remove the two red coils and the two chip capacitors as shown in the N1GKZ article. The chip caps provide you a chance to practice your surgery skill with a magnifying glass and tweezers. You now have a unit with 15.5 dB of gain and a NF of 7.8 dB.

Level 3, That Was Easy, What's Next? Now it is time to replace the crystal and move the IF up into the 2 meter ham band. Carefully de-solder both the N-connector and the F-connector. The N-connector has a holding nut, but the F-connector screws out and solder wick is recommended. Be very careful of the latter as it is easy to damage the center pin. Next, remove the remaining screws on the circuit board, including the two on the voltage regulators and the small one in the middle by the vertical shield. Remove the circuit board and carefully de-solder and remove the old crystal. You will likely have to de-solder and suck out the holes (solder sucker bulb is very handy) before the replacement crystal will insert. Make sure the new crystal is flush and cut the leads off very short after soldering. You now have downconverter that puts the IF at 144 MHz for 2400 MHz input. You, of course, could pick another IF, like 140 MHz (my preference for easy mental conversion) or even somewhere in the 70 cm band. A 70 cm IF would be convenient if you plan to use 2 meters for uplink or to drive an L-band converter. I personally think the 2 meter IF is preferable, allowing mode U/S with a common dual-band rig (FT-847, IC-821H, etc.). I anticipate modes V/U and U/V to give way to modes U/S and L/S very quickly.

Level 4, Tweak That Baby: G0MRF has two mods that will bring you up to about 22 dB of gain and a 5.5 - 6.0 NF: adding a pair of 22 pF capacitors to the IF stage and physically extending the image stripline filter. You can find suitable 22 pF ceramic disc capacitors in Radio Shack 272-806 (all I could find on Sunday afternoon). Cut the capacitor leads short, about 4 mm, and bend them halfway at 90 degrees to facilitate soldering in place (you will want the magnifying glass for this operation). For the stripline filter, cut a couple of capacitor or resister leads to about 3 mm and solder to the ends of the board striplines, extending them about 1.5 mm. Note the two striplines are not the same length. Compare your final "extensions" to the one in the fine picture on the reference site above. This is a far as I was willing to go, but all went well and the patient survived. I am indebted to the above referenced authors for making their knowledge and experience available. I had this unit tested at AMSAT-UK and it came in at 22.5 dB gain @ 5.6 dB NF: I'm happy!

Level 5, Oh, I Forgot Power: The Drake unit will accept 12 Vdc up the coax (into the F-connector). If your rig has that capability or you are inclined to add it externally, that is the easy way to go. The JN1GKZ site has a simple mod for routing external power up to the unit, but it requires drilling a hole in the case. I cringe at the thought of drilling a hole in an obviously well-made weatherproof enclosure, so I opted to bypass this mod and power the unit from my rig (IC-820H).

Level 6, Where Only The Brave Follow: G0MRF has the ultimate mod, replacing the stock Drake GaAsFET with a higher performance device, an MGA88578. This mod requires extensive revision to the RF amplifier section of the board, but results in an impressive 32 dB of gain at almost 2 dB NF. Now you are talking real low-noise performance. The JN1GKZ site also has a RF amplifier mod, but it appears to offer less for the effort. For my money, a low noise MMDS preamp (California Amplifier model no. 30947, $60 plus shipping) may be a safer bet to get to this kinds of performance level. If you want to try it, though, you can see the K5PK photos here.