I had a chance to install a dozen components today, but it took about 50 minutes. This was because the two adjustable caps (C13 & C20) as supplied do not match the manual description or silkscreen outline. Elecraft specifies a particular mounting orientation.
Examination of the schematic shows that both caps are trimming oscillators, and neither leg is ground referenced, so I’m not sure why there is a concern over orientation.
Like many small trimmer caps, the adjustment screw (rotor) is attached to one of the two pins, and the stator is on the other. So approaching the screw might couple in some stray capacitance making it hard to set things. Usually one tries to have the rotor ground referenced to avoid that.
In both cases, one side of the cap is attached to the crystal, and the other is going into a pin on the SE612 mixer/oscillator chip. While I don’t think it will matter much, I figured avoiding having the rotor end on the crystal would be best. In the photo below the stator is colored red and is a rectangular bump, so maybe that is the “flat” side. in any event, the flat side on the silk screen goes to the crystal. So this is how I installed them, red side to the flat.
