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Posted: 2/16/2012 9:03:35 AM EDT
After seeing a reference to it in pic's thread about the ultimate manpack ham radio, I knew I had to have one. I exchanged a few emails with Yimin and ordered one. I got the 4-30 MHz version since I figured as a portable radio it's better paired with the higher frequencies hence smaller antennas so I traded 80m for full coverage of 40-10m. It's sold as a kit (or assembled for $100 more) and does 20 watts. Receive draw is 200ma and 20w CW draws a max of 8 amps.
Should be a fun project! Pics from their website: 
It even has a dedicated data connector so I'm thinking custom connector terminating into two 1/8" cables + netbook = portable PSK station 
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Posted: 2/16/2012 9:18:46 AM EDT
[#1]
I've been looking at this too. Have you considered the juma radios also?
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Posted: 2/16/2012 9:18:59 AM EDT
[#2]
Kit or assembled?
Keep us posted. |
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Posted: 2/16/2012 9:54:50 AM EDT
[#3]
Quoted:
Kit or assembled? Keep us posted. Kit, of course! What's the fun in something that works? 
I'll do a build thread when I start it. |
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Posted: 2/16/2012 10:01:01 AM EDT
[#4]
Quoted:
I've been looking at this too. Have you considered the juma radios also? The Juma is another interesting radio. It's a little more compact but only does 10 watts and costs about $250 more. |
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Posted: 2/16/2012 10:03:38 AM EDT
[#5]
Quoted: Quoted: I've been looking at this too. Have you considered the juma radios also? The Juma is another interesting radio. It's a little more compact but only does 10 watts and costs about $250 more. I'm just about finished with a juma rx-1. Steady hands and some good soldering equipment are required. |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 4:58:28 AM EDT
[#6]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
I've been looking at this too. Have you considered the juma radios also? The Juma is another interesting radio. It's a little more compact but only does 10 watts and costs about $250 more. I'm just about finished with a juma rx-1. Steady hands and some good soldering equipment are required. There are a decent number of SMT parts in the TJ4A. I've soldered surface mount before. The keys are having a very clean and fine point on your soldering iron, magnifying goggles, and a tiny amount of superglue (applied with a toothpick) to tack down the component before soldering it. |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 10:40:39 AM EDT
[#7]
Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I've been looking at this too. Have you considered the juma radios also? The Juma is another interesting radio. It's a little more compact but only does 10 watts and costs about $250 more. I'm just about finished with a juma rx-1. Steady hands and some good soldering equipment are required. There are a decent number of SMT parts in the TJ4A. I've soldered surface mount before. The keys are having a very clean and fine point on your soldering iron, magnifying goggles, and a tiny amount of superglue (applied with a toothpick) to tack down the component before soldering it. hihi, yep. There are quite a few techniques when SMT soldering is involved. That's one of the things that interested me with the Juma. I've done quite a bit of reflow rework in the past. It also helps when you have a hot air machine. Reminds me, if any arfcommers ever need to borrow a hakko hot air station, I have a spare I'll lend out for the price of shipping both ways. |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 11:02:12 AM EDT
[#8]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
I've been looking at this too. Have you considered the juma radios also? The Juma is another interesting radio. It's a little more compact but only does 10 watts and costs about $250 more. I'm just about finished with a juma rx-1. Steady hands and some good soldering equipment are required. There are a decent number of SMT parts in the TJ4A. I've soldered surface mount before. The keys are having a very clean and fine point on your soldering iron, magnifying goggles, and a tiny amount of superglue (applied with a toothpick) to tack down the component before soldering it. thought in the description they said all the SMT's were already mounted/soldered? |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 11:56:46 AM EDT
[#9]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
I've been looking at this too. Have you considered the juma radios also? The Juma is another interesting radio. It's a little more compact but only does 10 watts and costs about $250 more. I'm just about finished with a juma rx-1. Steady hands and some good soldering equipment are required. There are a decent number of SMT parts in the TJ4A. I've soldered surface mount before. The keys are having a very clean and fine point on your soldering iron, magnifying goggles, and a tiny amount of superglue (applied with a toothpick) to tack down the component before soldering it. thought in the description they said all the SMT's were already mounted/soldered? That's inaccurate. I think all of the SMTs for the display module are pre-soldered, and all of the ICs are. But there are a buch of diodes, capacitors, resistors, and a few SMT transformers that aren't soldered. |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 4:43:55 PM EDT
[#10]
Let me know what you plan on doing for a handset.
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Posted: 2/17/2012 5:04:54 PM EDT
[#11]
You know, that is a nice looking enclosure. Does anyone know the manufacturer and part number for it? I bet an IC7000, battery and tuner would fit in there quite well.
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Posted: 2/17/2012 5:09:23 PM EDT
[#12]
This is relevent to my interests. This might make a good intro to HF rig.
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Posted: 2/17/2012 5:41:09 PM EDT
[#13]
Quoted:
This is relevent to my interests. This might make a good intro to HF rig. Now this being said by Mister Fucking Simplicity himself, my guess is that this is going to be a little harder to operate than it looks. 1. It comes with no speaker, hand/headset 2. I believe setting it to a certain frequency will be a little slow via buttons. 3. What do you use for a tuner? 4. http://harrisburg.craigslist.org/ele/2820821431.html by the time you get the rig delivered and it is only a 20 watt rig you have coughed up $550. The you need a power supply, a tuner, an antenna, a mike/speaker (head/hand set) 5. an IC 718 NEW is only a little more and has a better track record and 80 watts more power. This is a tinker rig for an experienced ham of which I am not. |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 6:00:24 PM EDT
[#14]
Quoted:
Quoted:
This is relevent to my interests. This might make a good intro to HF rig. Now this being said by Mister Fucking Simplicity himself, my guess is that this is going to be a little harder to operate than it looks. 1. It comes with no speaker, hand/headset 2. I believe setting it to a certain frequency will be a little slow via buttons. 3. What do you use for a tuner? 4. http://harrisburg.craigslist.org/ele/2820821431.html by the time you get the rig delivered and it is only a 20 watt rig you have coughed up $550. The you need a power supply, a tuner, an antenna, a mike/speaker (head/hand set) 5. an IC 718 NEW is only a little more and has a better track record and 80 watts more power. This is a tinker rig for an experienced ham of which I am not. But each day you are becoming more and more an experienced ham. Funny how that works. 
Vulcan94 |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 7:53:34 PM EDT
[#15]
Quoted:
You know, that is a nice looking enclosure. Does anyone know the manufacturer and part number for it? I bet an IC7000, battery and tuner would fit in there quite well./quote] Just a shot in the dark, but I'd just bet a HVAC shop could conjure up some kind of fairly weatherproof case that you could set up a manpack rig with. Just a shot in the dark. Stick your stuff in the car and grab a dozen doughnuts and bring it all in there. If they are not busy they'll brainstorm with you. Most guys are interested in stuff like ham radios. |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 8:15:22 PM EDT
[#16]
Extra! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!
The guy from youkits dot com just got back with me. He read my spec sheet and said he was going to be off somewhere for a week discussing the idea with the big bosses. This MAY be the opportunity to get a pretty good manpack type rig at a decent price. While you can rest assured it probably won't be waterproof or bulletproof it may be a good deal for the money. I will keep you posted. You might go to the website and email them expressing interest in a manpack type set like the one another member of the ham site you are on described the other day. |
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Posted: 2/17/2012 9:51:24 PM EDT
[#17]
Quoted:
Extra! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!!! The guy from youkits dot com just got back with me. He read my spec sheet and said he was going to be off somewhere for a week discussing the idea with the big bosses. This MAY be the opportunity to get a pretty good manpack type rig at a decent price. While you can rest assured it probably won't be waterproof or bulletproof it may be a good deal for the money. I will keep you posted. You might go to the website and email them expressing interest in a manpack type set like the one another member of the ham site you are on described the other day. This is why I'm glad to have your crazy ass around. |
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Posted: 2/18/2012 3:51:59 AM EDT
[#18]
Quoted:
This is why I'm glad to have your crazy ass around. All I do is ask people if they have things. |
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Posted: 2/18/2012 4:25:52 AM EDT
[#19]
Quoted:
Quoted:
This is relevent to my interests. This might make a good intro to HF rig. Now this being said by Mister Fucking Simplicity himself, my guess is that this is going to be a little harder to operate than it looks. 1. It comes with no speaker, hand/headset 2. I believe setting it to a certain frequency will be a little slow via buttons. 3. What do you use for a tuner? 4. http://harrisburg.craigslist.org/ele/2820821431.html by the time you get the rig delivered and it is only a 20 watt rig you have coughed up $550. The you need a power supply, a tuner, an antenna, a mike/speaker (head/hand set) 5. an IC 718 NEW is only a little more and has a better track record and 80 watts more power. This is a tinker rig for an experienced ham of which I am not. I'm probably going to convert a surplus military handset like in the pictures from the website. Frequency is entered with up/down buttons (pretty much like the up/down switches on a lot of military rigs) but it also has memories. Since it's a momentary contact for up/down, I'm thinking about adding a return-to-center momentary rotary switch which would work pretty much like any VFO dial, or if I felt like getting fancy I could add a little extra hardware and a rotary encoder to do the same thing. I'm planning on using resonant antennas to save weight, though Yimin told me they have an internal auto tuner in the works. Batteries are going to be small 12v SLA batteries in the 8-10 AH range. Since the case weighs 1.5 kg and has a lot of empty space, I might build it into a smaller plastic box to save space and weight. |
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Posted: 2/18/2012 4:52:08 AM EDT
[#20]
Quoted: You know, that is a nice looking enclosure. Does anyone know the manufacturer and part number for it? I bet an IC7000, battery and tuner would fit in there quite well. I'm not so sure. It might fit, but I think if you restricted the air flow from a 7K and used any amount of real power, it would die of heat stroke pretty quickly... |
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Posted: 2/18/2012 4:58:59 AM EDT
[#21]
Quoted:
Quoted:
You know, that is a nice looking enclosure. Does anyone know the manufacturer and part number for it? I bet an IC7000, battery and tuner would fit in there quite well. I'm not so sure. It might fit, but I think if you restricted the air flow from a 7K and used any amount of real power, it would die of heat stroke pretty quickly... That's a good point. |
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Posted: 2/18/2012 5:05:52 AM EDT
[#22]
Quoted:
I'm probably going to convert a surplus military handset like in the pictures from the website. Frequency is entered with up/down buttons (pretty much like the up/down switches on a lot of military rigs) but it also has memories. Since it's a momentary contact for up/down, I'm thinking about adding a return-to-center momentary rotary switch which would work pretty much like any VFO dial, or if I felt like getting fancy I could add a little extra hardware and a rotary encoder to do the same thing. I'm planning on using resonant antennas to save weight, though Yimin told me they have an internal auto tuner in the works. hopefully it will be a good one Batteries are going to be small 12v SLA batteries in the 8-10 AH range. Since the case weighs 1.5 kg and has a lot of empty space, AFM saw the rig and opined the space might fit a tuner of some sort. Either that or batteries. I think that Yimin has it labeled as a battery boxI might build it into a smaller plastic box to save space and weight. I wonder what Yimin has in mind when he said he might be creating one that might fit the spec sheet I sent him. |
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Posted: 2/18/2012 7:40:37 AM EDT
[#23]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
You know, that is a nice looking enclosure. Does anyone know the manufacturer and part number for it? I bet an IC7000, battery and tuner would fit in there quite well. I'm not so sure. It might fit, but I think if you restricted the air flow from a 7K and used any amount of real power, it would die of heat stroke pretty quickly... That's a good point. Well of course I would provide for ventilation! Part number? Anyone? |
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Posted: 2/18/2012 7:55:53 AM EDT
[#24]
Check out some of the Ten-Tech enclosures. They are know for making some of the best cases
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