Ham Radio - Review and demo of the QRP labs QCX transceiver kit. 

You're going to love the little radio Kevin. Light on battery use and sounds great on the air. The GPS kit will let you do WSPR beaconing easily, but yes, I don't know how often that would be used. Maybe for watching the propagation change over the day?

Well since you have some CAD experience, check out FreeCAD. Runs on any OS and easy to use. Plenty of tutorials online as well. However, there's a MUCH simpler option that I think you'll like. Working on the video today. Hope to have it up Wednesday.

Saw that video last night. Very nice. I'm an old C programmer from the K&R days. So far OpenSCAD is getting the admittedly basic models drawn. Made a nice BiQuad frame, a chassie/cabinet for some RB133 and RB153 RouterBoards I have laying about, a mouse trap. Who doesn't want to make YABMT? Some other little things. I just got the radio running last night and did some QSOs on it today. My second QSO with the little QCX was with a fellow in SC who was also doing his second QSO with his QCX ... Karma ;) I'm running it at 12 volts. I just have no desire to run one of those finals into a heat problem and the thing gets really hot when you turn on the WSPR beacon.

You'll have fun with the radio. The plates are just slightly meshed, the level dropped when completely unmeshed, so I was just inside the range.

No, it's a fixed filter. Thanks for watching!

Good idea, the DVM input. The buck mode converter would bring up the background noise level due to the hash noise it produces. You'd have to filter the heck out of it's output.

Yeah you are right about the buck - 4 x 18650 li-ions should do the trick with a protection / charging module. As you gave yours away - was wondering how you found it compared to your commercial rig?

You may have seen this already, but I see QRP Labs are doing a '+' version of this kit now that includes a few modifications and an enclosure. (I think that most of this review is still very relevant, which is why I just watched it...)

+Braden Glett the cw decoder responding to noise. I'm still fiddling with it's settings trying to get it to work better

Kevin Loughin Ah, ok. Thank you. Those never work as well as my ears do! Lol

Maybe I should just call out for you on EchoLink instead? hahaha

+Matthew Sweet yes, Homebrew paddles and straight key. And o did use the key later in the vid.

Thanks for the reply. You should do a video on those sometime, if you haven't already. I've not yet had the time to go through your complete compendium of vids, but a marathon is coming soon.

Another question for you, Kevin; how did many days from order to unboxing? I ordered mine last night and it appears it's going to be a while before it gets shipped out. I'm okay with that, but just wondering.

I don't have one to compare it to, sorry. Maybe someone will send me one.

Kevin Loughin many thanks, I try to design to buy one of them.

Bitx40, unmodified, is a SSB transceiver. This one is CW only. So that is the main difference. And I'm not sure that the source code for this QCX rig is available. (?) So if you wanted to modify the functionality of the code your hands are tied. Hopefully I'm wrong about that but so far I haven't been able to find it. The Bitx40 has fully modifiable code via easily modified Arduino "sketches".

You've been in it for awhile! That's a low number. When you get it built and ready, email me to set up a sked.

p.s. Now you can 3D print a case :)

I already did. :-)

Any resonant antenna you'd use with any 40-meter transceiver. Of course there are poor antennas, better antennas and best antennas. The cheapest will be a simple coax-fed dipole mounted as high as you can get it, which is probably the most common antenna in use anyway. Verticals works well, especially for longer ranges, but you have to tolerate the dead-ground "donut" at medium distances caused by the low radiation angle. Another inexpensive option is the NVIS; an excellent receiving antenna with no dead spaces but which lacks long-range punch on transmit. Of course the greatest variable is the 40m band itself.... a solid short-range daytime band that gets longer legs after sundown. Of course if I had my druthers, I'd go for a directional log-periodic up about 200-ft. :)

I hadn't heard that, about the 20 meter version. Well, on 20, with a good antenna, 1.6 will go a long way. Hunt around 14.050 for slower CW. Lot's of SKCC guys around there. Copy for awhile until you get your speed up a bit and then dive right in! There's something satisfying when you make a contact on a kit you built.

+Francis Thompson no, he only sent me the radio.

The whole band, but its just a cw rig, so you can stay down in that range.

I suppose you could chain individual programs. Speech to text and then feed the result into a Text to CW program.

I'd have to do it in pieces and assemble it after. The bed on my printer is only 12cm square and I think the board is longer than that. I haven't measured yet though, too busy on other things at the moment. I'll probably look at it eventually.

I have an idea for a 3D printed case.... Some laymen would probably call it "pouring a bunch of hot glue all over it."

Yes. It transmits on the amateur radio bands.

Amaury Reyes Yes.

It’s $50!