Posted: 1/28/2008 8:47:52 AM EDT
| I've almost completed my qrp collection. I just bought the last component to my heathkit hw-9 series station. It's the hm-9 watt meter. My next objective is to buy a hw 8. I already have an hw-7 + PSA-7. I'm also thinking of a new project. I'm not going to throw down the money for an elecraft yet. Any suggestions? My previous builds are an S&S TAC-1 and norcal SST. |
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I have a Yaesu 817 that I have a lot of fun with. It is an ideal travel radio. I take it with me anytime I go out of town, and, right now it is my only HF rig outside my vehicle. Last November I took it to visit my mother in Eastern Ohio. I put up a dipole (130 foot flattop fed with ladder line) in some trees at about 50 feet. This is on top of a high hill overlooking the Ohio River (you can see three states from the front porch). I had a blast working 75 meters QRP. One morning I was listening to a group who were pissed off at some guy on an adjacet frequency splattering them. They were using veiled language to imply that they were going to turn their amplifiers up past the legal limit (like that would help the situation). I broke into the roundtable and talked to them for a couple go rounds and then told them that I was running 500 milliwatts. After I cleared, one guy told another; "I hate to tell you this, but he was stonger than you are".  I used it a couple weeks ago by droping a piece of wire out of a 6th floor hotel room window in Ely Nevada. I immediately worked a guy in Denver on 30 meters. Great little rig. Probably the most fun rig I have ever owned. I am going to get an Elecraft KX1 next. I would really like to get into backpacking and I think this would be the prefect rig for that. In addition it is pretty damn cool as it is. I am also going to build the Elecraft automatic antenna tuner. They offer a cable to connnect it to the 817. I also own one of those MFJ QRP CW rigs and have had it for many years. I frequently use it at work: I am a firefighter. I stretch a folded dipole for 30 meters from the roof of the station over to a lightpole in the parking lot and operate off the tailgate of my truck. I came across some pictures of me doing that from back when I first came on the department in like 1992 0r 93 using the same rig. That rig has been used extensivly on mountain tops. I used to drive my 4wd pickup up to the top of a local mountain (something like 8500 ft), let the dog out to run around without a leash, put up that folded dipole, sit in a lawnchair and work a few people. Then of course I would break out a .22 pistol and do a little plinking. The first rig I ever owned, and used for years was a Ten Tec Century 21 which was not technically QRP but it only ran 30 watts input. |
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I have the full set of the HW-9 series that I built back in '85. I also have one of the NorCal 40's that I have a blast with. Then there is the NorCal Sierra that sits unbuilt in the package... gotta get around to building that someday. I also have the 817, and I love it as well. I would love to build an Elecraft kit, but I think I have too many now.. :) -Corn |
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I am getting ready to buy and build the BitX 20. http://www.qrpkits.com/bitx20a.html http://yb1zdx.arc.itb.ac.id/data/orari-diklat/teknik/homebrew/bitx20/bitx20.pdf http://yb1zdx.arc.itb.ac.id/data/orari-diklat/homebrew/bitx20/ Do a search for lots more information on it. It is a 20 meter SSB transceiver designed by a ham in India for people living in developing countries where parts and equipment are hard to come by. As an example, the original used washers as torroid cores.  An American, designed a PC board and a parts kit. That link is the one above. |
Really, I accidentally lost one of those surface mount 2n3904 transistors from their tunerupper kit. The guy responded to me next day. I got it about a week later. |
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If you haven't built any of Dave Benson's (Small Wonder Labs) kits, ya gotta build at least a couple. You get a lotta radio for the money, and you get to scrounge your own enclosure and controls, which is more than half of the fun not to mention that you can choose better quality controls than Wilderness Radio supplied crap. AND, the kits are half the price of WR. SW+ kits are $55 including shipping, and the Rock-Mite is $30. I highly recommend the SW+ series, and get the Freq-Mite freq annunciator to go with it. Then read up on mods; the ARRL book "QRP Power" has a great section on optimizing the SW+ series. After you have some fun with that a get a taste for more, how about building a Sierra? No, not the Wilderness version: do what I did, buy a board set from FAR Circuits and build it from scratch, perhaps Georgia Sierra style (the xtals are cheaper) and put it on all kinds of bands! 160 and all HF bands except possibly 60M have been done, as well as 6M; and I have plans to put mine on 432. |