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Homebrewing virgin, no more!	Reply
by N3QE on May 19, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
I've been a ham 30-some years now. Always working with equipment less than new. Lots of Heath, Drake, etc. stuff, even a 50-year old HBR-14, going through the shack, all of it repaired, maintained, or modified/enhanced by me and my soldering iron, so I thought I was doing pretty well technically. I had also built a lot of little station accessories, tin-can transmitters, VFO's, regen receivers, etc., all of them homebrew, over the years. But never had I actually built a complete working station from scratch. Kits, yeah, I did some Heathkits back in the 70's. But not from scratch. But this past weekend, I built for my first time ever a full 40M SSB transceiver, one of the winners of the ARRL $50 Homebrew challenge. And - whad'ya know - it works! I've got a bench filled with lots of fancy instruments and a computer filled with lots of fancy data, but in the end the satisfaction of knowing that I built it with a pile of junkbox and a few ordered parts, a piece of unetched PC board, and an X-acto knife and a soldering iron, is incredible, and it actually works!

RE: Homebrewing virgin, no more!	Reply
by KG9NZ on May 19, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
Congratulations! I'm considering building that $50 circuit winner from QST as well some time. When I first got my license in the late 1990's, I built a kit radio (40m QRP from Ramsey and 5W QRP amplifier) and had QSOs using this and a commercial SW radio as the receiver. Never have had QSOs with the receiver being homebuilt though. 73 Frank KG9NZ

RE: Homebrewing virgin, no more!	Reply
by 5R8GQ on May 19, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
Congrats! Did you build the MMR-40 or the TAK-40? Because I couldn't find any schematics for the TAK40 that was featured on the cover, whereas the MMR-40, (the non-computer category winner) is available as a full on kit from qrpkits.com. I still don't see how the average joe could build one of those rigs for under $50 unless they had an incredibly well stocked junk box!

RE: Homebrewing virgin, no more!	Reply
by N3QE on May 20, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
5R8GQ writes: > Did you build the MMR-40 or the TAK-40? > Because I couldn't find any schematics for the TAK40 > that was featured on the cover, whereas the MMR-40, > (the non-computer category winner) is available > as a full on kit from qrpkits.com. The one I finished first was the MMR-40. The TAK-40 is still "in progress"... the digital board is done and programmed but I still have to do the other boards. TAK-40 schematics, layouts, firmware, etc are at http://www.arrl.org/files/qst-binaries I think this is called out at the end of the (paper) QST article. You mention the schematics at qrpkits.com, but if you look on KD1JV's website, http://kd1jv.qrpradio.com/ you can see not only the 40M version but some closely related 80M ones too. > I still don't see how the average joe could > build one of those rigs for under $50 unless > they had an incredibly well stocked junk box! I bought enough parts to build 3 MMR-40's from Mouser. In fact I plan to build slightly modified ones for 80M and one for 20M as well - and take all of them with me to Hawaii!

RE: Homebrewing virgin, no more!	Reply
by VK2HHS on June 3, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
N3QE, Great Job! I'm just in the process of putting together details, contruction tips, bill of materials from our local suppliers, etc. and hope to start construction of this within a short while. Actually, I'd like to get this going as a club group activity. I've just had a response from Fred at Farcircuits stating that boards will be soon available. A major step in the right direction! I'd appreciate any ideas or tips that you found useful. Also pictures! I always like to see how others implement their ideas. 73 de VK2HHS

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