I would pick one of the QRP frequencies, probably on 40m (7.030 in Europe, I think 7.040 in USA).

73 Dave

While I am sure a KX3 will make an ideal first radio and it's receive performance is vastly superior to an FT857, you may find the 10 Watt power level a bit limiting.

For some time while I was re-evaluating what I wanted from ham radio, my only rig was a 10 Watt K2 with a 100 foot doublet antenna. Using only CW I worked 127 countries with that radio, not all of which were at the official QRP power level of 5 Watts, but nontheless it was probably the most fun I've ever had in amateur radio.

If you are confident at CW, 10W is plenty to have lots of good contacts with, however if you are going to run mostly SSB then 10 Watts can be a frustrating experience unless you have really good antennas.

My recommendation would be to buy a general purpose HF radio second hand, either from a trusted local or a dealer, then look at QRP radio once you have some operating experience. The "HF/VHF/UHF" radios such as the 857, Icom 7000, etc. are not all they might at first seem, I would opt for a clean Kenwood TS570 that can be sold for a similar price to what you paid for it should you decide to upgrade it.

73 Dave

A 4 element single band quad should generally be around 50 Ohms feed, so you can feed one directly with 50 Ohm coax (via a choke balun).

There are both 4 element and 2 element 6 metre quad designs on my web site (www.astromag.co.uk/quad)

73 Dave

At my Spanish QTH I tried a "random" length of wire fed against four 1/4 wave radials mounted close to the house wall, the wire was an "inverted L" shape with the top of the vertical part about 30 foot high. The results using my four band K1 (40/30/20/15) were poor. I was able to obtain a good match, but signal reports were well below what I hoped for.

More recently I have been using a home made ground plane for 20 and 15 with good results.

If you download the Eznec demo program (http://eznec.com/), try various lengths of wire and compare the results with a dipole, doublet or ground plane... Mostly the random lengths of wire will do anything except what you hope for! The demo program will only model simple antennas, but will suffice for dipoles and ground planes.

73 Dave

I've just finished uploading details of my recently built receiver, it is a 10 band synthesized receiver covering 1.8 ~ 30 MHz using standard circuits in a modular form. The receiver is fairly simple to make for anyone with moderate construction experience and includes a few kit boards, such as the synthesizer and audio amplifier, which greatly eases construction.

http://www.astromag.co.uk/g4aon_rx/

73 Dave

See my web page at: http://www.astromag.co.uk/vertical/

Just a few ideas put on a page to help other antenna builders.

73 Dave

Transmit a few test calls, where you send something like:
VVV de W8XXX W8XXX W8XXX

Then after a couple of minutes check your call at:
http://www.reversebeacon.net

A network of stations will have automatically reported your signal strength from around the world.

Amazing or what?

73 Dave, G4AON

The Elecraft K3 utility program will key the K3 quite nicely on CW, give it a try it's free and you will already have it for updating the K3 firmware!

73 Dave, G4AON

May I suggest a fixed Voltage supply with crowbar protection circuit for your main shack supply and a less critical variable Voltage "bench supply" as well? Using a crowbar circuit in a variable supply means adjusting the crowbar as well as the supply. I wouldn't trust a power supply without a crowbar as your radio gear is more valuable than the cost of adding one.

I've had a couple of pass transistors fail in linear supplies, one blew the fuse in the crowbar I added (small "CB" grade power supply) and the other blew an audio amp.

As suggested elsewhere, the Astron supplies seem good. I have a military surplus Racal 35A supply that is pretty good - if a bit on the heavy side. I am not sure what you might find in ZL land though.

73 Dave

Glad to see the Astron has a crowbar protection circuit, which is a "must have" in any power supply.

I've had two linear (non switching) power supplies fail, one was powering radio equipment worth about 30 times more than the cost of the power supply and had a crowbar fitted by me that worked by blowing a fuse in the supply, the other was a plug top (wall wart) supply that blew an audio amplifier.

73 Dave

I recall having issues when I tried to program my VX-7 without downloading from it first. It is some time ago so my recollection is a bit vague, but it's worth checking.

73 Dave

Michael

You don't say if it's solely for use in the shack or outdoors. In my opinion, there are a few things to consider:

1. Does it need to be cheap, cheerful and small to take outdoors?

2. Do you need a large meter to either be easy to read or "stay put" on the desk.

3. Some meters have a remote sensor, allowing easier installation (no need for thick coax to be on your desk).

4. Do you want an accurate peak reading meter, able to catch a single "dit" which can also serve as a piece of test equipment?

Cheap and cheerful, the SX200 will suffice.

Most of my radios have an SWR meter built in, including my linear, so I do not use an SWR meter in-line at all. I have an LP100 which is excellent as a piece of test equipment for aligning/testing radios, as well as being fairly good at catching peaks, much better than SWR meters with analogue meters... However for really seeing what is happening on peaks nothing beats an oscilloscope.

I guess only you can decide...

73 Dave

I repaired 2 way radios for about 20 years and we never used anything but voice, a loud "four" into the mic is all that is needed.

If you really need a noise source, and I doubt it is necessary, any FM radio with the squelch open will provide plenty of noise.

73 Dave

Congratulations on your ticket.

I would try a 2 element to start with, they are cheap and easy to make and it will give you experience with a 3 dimensional antenna! I have built a couple of 10m 2 element quads in the past, I used a 4 foot 6" length of aluminium tubing for the boom, 3/4" tubes about 18" long in the form of an "X" at each end of the boom and bamboo garden canes for the spreaders. OK so the spreaders won't last, but it costs little and is easy to make, it will be a good experience too.

You can bolt the 3/4" aluminium tubes to the boom with with "U" bolts, or even TV aerial fixing clamps, the canes do not need much to secure them.

There are feed arrangements for a 2 element 6m quad on my web site (www.astromag.co.uk/quad), obviously you would need to scale up the 75 Ohm matching section from 6m to 10m. To save you working out dimensions for a 10m quad, an upscaled version for 28.5 MHz would be sized as below (from EZNec 4):

Driven element: 104.2" each side
Reflector: 110.9" each side
Spacing: 52.75"
Wire: 16g enamelled copper wire, or bare copper wire (not PVC insulated).
Feed impedance: 100 Ohm (use approx 68.6" of RG59 coax for a quarter wave matching network to 50 Ohm, check with an analyser if you have access to one).

SWR: 1.03:1 at 28.5 MHz, gain in free space 7.25 dBi, Front to back 23 dB

73 Dave

Is that based on practical experience? I have a 40m dipole at 30 feet and a ground mounted quarter wave (wire up a fishing pole), the ground mounted antenna has 16 buried radials...

On DX the vertical is hands down the better performer. I have done A/B comparisons many times and it's not a fluke that the vertical is better for DX.

73 Dave