Anyone tried this HF kit?

[retrev]

Saw this on eBay, it's cheap and you usually get what you pay for and all that. Wondering if anyone has one or has heard anything about them? Are they worth the money? I'm looking for something that will run reasonably off of batteries for QRP operation while hiking (which is partly why I want cheap...if it breaks, it's <$50 to replace it). Hoping it'll make descent regional or close DX contacts probably on 40m.

[CJay]

Ermm, which piece of kit?

[hendorog]

Ermm, which piece of kit?

What, can't you see it? Its the emperors new HF!

[vk3yedotcom]

There is only one sub $50 kit that could be considered high quality and with a good reputation for on-air use.

This is the QCX from QRP Labs.

https://www.qrp-labs.com/qcx.html

I've not built one but have heard good accounts from people who have.  It has many features that make it good for on-air work.
Eg single signal receiver, 5 watts output, frequency agile transmitter etc. 

Much cheaper and widely on eBay is the Pixie.  They're fun to build and modify. Not so fun on air as contacts will  be hard. 
It's very low power (about 0.5w), stuck on a single frequency and has a very broad receiver that may be overloaded by broadcast stations.

More detail at: http://home.alphalink.com.au/~parkerp/projects/projpixie.htm

There are some kits of intermediate price and complexity but again you want a good receiver, frequency agility and decent power output. 

[bd139]

Vote here for the QCX. Own one on 40m and very much like it. It’s currently being the poor thing copying my awful CW. When I keyed my call the other month when I had foundation license it came out M6TIT 

[CJay]

Mate of mine got given G7DUM or DIM, can't remember which but it caused him a fair bit of embarassment.

[bd139]

Yeah never get auto assigned. Fortunately that was just me keying my old call which wasn’t M6TIT.

Hopefully M0 after tomorrow

[CJay]

Luck with that (not that I think luck's necessary)

[rhb]

I bought a pair of QCXs for 40 m.  Haven't built them yet, but without a license it's not a rush item.  But I looked at the design a good bit and was quite impressed.  I'm interested in developing  a low data rate protocol which will provide reliable low power communications over long distances.  Point to point RFmail.

[bd139]

Design of the QCX is very nice. It’s a phasing receiver with class E PA and built in diagnostic and test gear. It does actually kick out 5W with a couple of BS170s which don’t even get warm. Was very surprised.  My only complaints are it comes with cheap shitty resistors and caps. There was a quality control problem with them for a bit. I built mine with higher quality parts and it worked straight up.

[Lord of nothing]

I bought a pair of QCXs for 40 m.

Thats not far. 

[bd139]

Check this out then

https://groups.io/g/QRPLabs/topic/i_have_moved_the_super/12934242?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,0,12934242

[bd139]

In reply to someone who posted about there not being any schematics and then the post disappearing ...

It's in the manual: https://www.qrp-labs.com/images/qcx/assembly3_A4.pdf and here https://www.qrp-labs.com/images/qcx/assembly3_A4.pdf

All the schematics are available.

Only thing that isn't is the uC firmware.

[Lord of nothing]

  why do you make an Double Post and not EDIT your Post?

[bd139]

It wasn't a double post. I was replying to someone who asked where the schematics were. Then I did edit it and add the top line after the poster deleted it after probably finding them where I said. The edited post line at the bottom only appears if someone views the thread in the time between it being posted the first time and the edit.

[CJay]

Design of the QCX is very nice. It’s a phasing receiver with class E PA and built in diagnostic and test gear. It does actually kick out 5W with a couple of BS170s which don’t even get warm. Was very surprised.  My only complaints are it comes with cheap shitty resistors and caps. There was a quality control problem with them for a bit. I built mine with higher quality parts and it worked straight up.

I'm on the brink of pushing the buy button on a QCX, even closer now they don't have to travel thousands of miles from Japan, what sort of results are you seeing from it?

[bd139]

Pretty good. It’s CW only. Got Canary Islands and Finland on a sotabeams squid pole with hacked up inverted V and 8xAA batteries. Receiver is as good as my FT-450D. Also acts as a WSPR beacon. The CW decoder is good enough for local practice without transmitting as well.

Don’t do what I did though and solder all the controls onto the board. Plan an enclosure up front and mount them on there.

My CW paddle cost a ton more than the damn thing.

Edit: fix stupid autocomplete failures. Also didn’t use an AMU with it. Cut antenna about right and winged it. Seems to be relatively SWR proof or I’m lucky