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Hendricks PFR-3	Reply
by K4AAF on June 5, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
I saw these radios at Dayton. Anybody building one? Any on-air reports?

RE: Hendricks PFR-3	Reply
by W5FYI on June 5, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
I bet Doug Hendricks at www.qrpkits.com can direct you to some happy users. The only gripes I've heard has to do with the rig's color and the knobs sticking up out of the top of the case.

RE: Hendricks PFR-3	Reply
by K8WPE on June 7, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
I bought one at Dayton and had a local ham friend build it for me. The manual has some errors in it that would lead a newbie builder astray but it is being constantly updated. It is an easy build if you have past experience. My builder understands the circuitry and was able to work around the errors. (To date no email response from Doug on the errors or help with the drift, but I bet he is swamped with work plus summer ham fests. He did send the missing parts in a week.) It drifts about 100 HZ an hour out of the case and less in the case. Good contacts foreign and domestic on the first tries. Good honest 5 watts out. Sensitive receiver. An Elcraft it is not but neither is the cost. I look forward to using it a lot this summer at the cottage with my Par Endfedz antenna. So far I am happy with the rig but would probably have given up building it myself without a good experienced Elmer. I know mine is of the first production run as I ordered it before Dayton. Doug's past reputation is excellent and this is a labor of love to the QRP community. I think the yellow box will have a place of honor next to my KX-1, K1 and K2. I may be nuts but I still like my Wilderness Sierra the best......

RE: Hendricks PFR-3	Reply
by W2BPI on June 17, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
I built one. It worked great except for keyer. Was sluggish. Steve is going to reprogram the chip for me. There are still some errors in the manual. I have hearing problem so made a mod to increase the audio output. This will be a great rig to take camping. Would be nice if there was a forum for this rig. Great value for the price. Like all Steve Weber designed rigs it performs great! 73 George/W2BPI

RE: Hendricks PFR-3	Reply
by WB8YYY on June 18, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
Definitely a nice rig. See mine and George's reviews here at eham.net. I concur the instructions are not the quality of Elecraft, and I had to work to interpret a few places only. (Perhaps I should try to remember these and send feedback to Doug!). My keyer is fine in sending, but as the manual suggests requires a longer pause between characters. But I have heard 2 reports of erratic keying so I am puzzled how this can vary between the same firmware in the same kind of controller. RIT and QRS/QRQ controls work well. I did the audio alignment only and my QSO's are working. I haven't checked frequency accuracy but I hear QRP QSO's when tuned to 7040 and 14060 so very likely mine is within the +/- 200 Hz mentioned in the manual. I had 6 missing caps (glad nothing unique was missing) - I alerted Doug and he said they would ship, but he obviously hasn't got to it yet. For the 'high cost of shipping' ($20 compared to about $12 on the meter) - he could have given us a tracking number via email. I sense this is a 'great value' for a 3-band transceiver, and others may come to same conclusion in comparing present/past options (DSW-series, K1, KX1, even homebrew using FCC1/2).

RE: Hendricks PFR-3	Reply
by W2BPI on June 20, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
Have been having many qso's with this rig on all bands even with the very poor band condx. I tried using the no counterpoise antenna sold on e-bay. With the antenna in the basement I made several contacts.

RE: Hendricks PFR-3	Reply
by K2QPN on July 9, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
I finished the PFR-3 about 3 weeks ago. I am happy with the radio. I have worked 17 countries so far with a vertical antenna. I am looking forward to QRP DXCC. Speaking as an experienced kit builder, building the kit was not difficult - no surface mounted parts. The assembly manual could be better - certainly not a Heathkit. A couple of times I had to stop and figure something out. I rate the PFR-3 a 5. Assemble manual is a 4. Hopefully the manual will improve over time.

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