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write your own review of the Hendricks PFR-3 Transceiver (40/30/20m).
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WF8O
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Rating: 5/5
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Feb 7, 2010 17:10
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Big bang for the buck!!!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I ordered this kit on 1/17/10, and it arrived on 1/29/10. The kit was well documented and came with all of the parts. Assembly was straight-forward. I completed the kit in eight or nine sessions of two to three hours. The assembly process has periodic check points, making it easy to guage one's progress and whether there are any problems. This is an excellent opportunity to enjoy the radio building process with reason to expect success on completion. This rig is truly a ham station in one package -- and it works FB.
73
de WF8O Mike Narges
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VA3IED
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 30, 2009 09:53
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Beautiful
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I built this rig over Christmas-- a lot of fun with quality components, professional PCB and well constructed (Ten-Tec) case.
Went together as planned, alignment was a snap and I have 5 watts out on 30, 40 and 4.5 watts on 20. I probably could have squeezed another 1/2 watt out for 20 but its no big deal.
The receiver is very sensitive--I tried an A-B comparison with my Omni and could not detect a real difference. Not overly scientific but it gave me a real good indication just how well designed this rig is.
The fit and function is great and the push button tuning works very well--as does the direct freq entry via cw and the keyer itself. I worried about having to do the labeling myself but even that went well. When the decals dried I used some spray clear coat (automotive)and gave it 3 coats. The last coat I did at a distance so the spray was semi-dry as it hit the case which created a a very durable textured coat. It looks great.
In all, I would give this rig a 6 if I could. I have already made lots of contacts with the internal batteries powering the rig and expect it will be my favorite rig for some time.
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WD9F
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 4, 2009 09:26
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GREAT portable QRP Rig!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I bought one of Doug's first kits in June 2008. I'm an experienced Heathkit & Elecraft builder. I found this kit a little harder and had to get some help noodling things out but Hams are great about this. I would strongly recommend the PFR-3 Yahoo discussion group to anyone tackling this kit. The guys in that group were a big help to me. In fact, due to huge committments at work & my snail pace building, one of them generously finished my kit for me and did all the final testing. I've had it running now for a month and it's just awesome. 5W or better on all three bands with 12V and 3W or better at 9.6V. The BLT tunes a 66 foot cf zepp (doublet) on all three bands (66 foot flat top or inverted V fed with 44 feet of light weight, 300 ohm twin lead). Many QSOs with great signal reports. I also got the paddles that come with it. They work well but take some getting used to. There is a modification described on the yahoo group that is reported as a big improvement. A friend is doing that for me now & while waiting I'm using my beloved Palm mini paddles. It's just great to be able to go out on the trail, or anywhere, with this rig, a pair of ear buds and a light weight antenna that fits in a big zip lock bag. An optional fiberglass push up mast or a Crappie fishing pole makes it a perfect & quick set up. My congratulations and thanks to Steve Weber & Doug Hendricks for this gift to the QRP world... (and thanks to my new friend Dale for finishing the build for me!).
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K7HV
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 23, 2009 17:20
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A GREAT rig: NOT just the "Poor Person's KX1 "
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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The kit was fairly straight forward to build despite some ambiguous descriptions in the manual. The magnet wires sent for the toroids were the wrong size, which required me to make a trip to Radio Shack. It was easy to get a quick answer from the Hendricks folks or the Yahoo newsgroup when I hit a snag. I opted to do several easy mods to improve the audio volume and fuse and polarity protect the power jack. I opted to work on it an hour or two at a time, so it took me about 5 days to build.
Once I got it on the air, I was impressed: it has a VERY sensitive RX, although I would have preferred wider band tuning and the ability to turn on/off a narrow filter, it took getting used to tuning 50Hz at a time. I can hear everything with the PFR that I can hear with my FT-857D. I was able to get the built in tuner to work by choosing the right antenna: a 55 ft long-wire with 1/4 wave radials for the 40/30/20 bands. It tunes my shorty G5RV @ my home QTH on 20 and 30 but not 40 - I use an LDG Z100 for 40. No big deal, I will just take the 55 ft wire on my camping trips. I am looking forward to NOT having to pack a antenna tuner, gel cell and small solar panel; I am going to use high capacity lithium AAs mounted in the case,which will run this rig for many hours. At home, I have been running off a 5 Ah gel cell for days and it has barely made a dent in the voltage... All things considered this is an ideal backpacking rig.
How does it play? This past week, I have worked all over the US, as well as several JAs, a UA0 and, today, an HB9! (a fellow on the Yahoo list recently announced that he worked 100 countries with his PFR3/vertical from 9-land!) A very impressive effort by the Hendricks folks and well worth the effort to build...
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K2QPN
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Rating: 5/5
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Jan 2, 2009 15:47
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Good rig!
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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I finished my PFR3 kit in June. So this is a 6 month review. This is a good do everything rig - antenna tuner, memory keyer, internal batteries, frequency readout, and band switching.
I am a DXer and I'm having fun working QRP DX while waiting for a sun spot. So far, I have worked 80 countries and QRP WAC with a vertical antenna.
Construction was fairly easy. Highly recommended.
73 Bob K2QPN
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KF8Z
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 4, 2008 09:34
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I've enjoyed it so far
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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First off, let me say that I am probably not a good judge of the 'CW Op' specific functions of this radio, since my CW is about 7wpm and I only use the paddles to trigger dits/dahs. I don't utilize the alternating iambic stuff (yet). I really am just trying to get out of 5wpm world. I bought the kit because I really enjoy building kits and I wanted something portable to take on vacations that would force me to use CW to increase my speed. I probably should have picked it up, though. It would be one less wire and separate item to have. I'm sure I was one of the first to start building the kit. I encountered a few errors right away. I sent them e-mail as I came across them and the web site was updated by the next day with the corrections on the PFR page. Where I found problems in the documentation I was able to reference the schematics for clarification. I was missing a resistor and a capacitor, but I was able to find them in my parts box. There were a few other corrections added to the site and before I was finished a new version of the manual was posted that included these changes, as well as a diagram or two that were referenced by not included in the original.
As far as the operation goes, it does take a little getting used to. The tuning isn't the same as spinning the dial with a 2.3Kz filter active. 300Hz filter and 500Hz tuning increment makes it easy to zoom past a weak signal pretty easy. Also, you can't always tune it to hear 700Hz audio with 500Hz steps, which is what I've been used to from the training CD.
I haven't used the BLT yet. I've been either connecting to an external tuner or to antennas that are tuned for the band in use. I've been using an external tuner so far because I don't have a way of connecting my antennas to the BNC, other than using a jumper connected through the tuner.
As a side note, we pressed the PFR-3 into Field Day service for some solar power bonus points when we discovered the solar charged battery was dead and there was no way it was even going to power a full sized rig's receiver. We made 9 contacts with it in about an hour.
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KE5HGQ
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Rating: 4/5
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Jun 30, 2008 18:16
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Fun kit to build!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I purchased my PFR-3 at the Dallas Hamcom on the Saturday of the show. It was a pleasure to meet Doug out there and get some questions answered about a previous kit that I had purchased from him. He is extremely helpful and totally stands behind his products.
Anyway, back to the review at hand. I awoke on Sunday morning after the convention at about 9:00am and started assembling the kit. By 6:30pm I had a completed and boxed assembly, waiting to get on the air. The manual has a few errors in it, as it is still fairly new, but the addendums on the website are already in the Rev B instructions that are posted at qrpkits.com. I only found one other error, and that had to do with adjusting the torroids if power was either slightly higher or lower than 5 watts. After finishing the build I have found posts by the designer, Steve Weber, posted on the QRP-L list that the Hi-Z/Low-Z torroid on the tuner needs further adjustment in order to tune a 44 foot doublet on all three bands. I will be making this modification soon, along with the volume modification (for increased headphone output) which was recently posted on the PFR-3 Yahoo group.
Steve Weber and Doug Hendricks have really done a great job at getting this kit to the market, and I think it will be a really good seller for them. I am anxiously awating the mods that are sure to come from the community as a whole.
The only reason I gave it a 4 and not a 5 is due to the errors in the manual, and that is about it.
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W2BPI
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 18, 2008 07:18
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Great lil rig
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Rcvr is sensitive and sharp. Xmtr gives 5 watts output with 12 volt gell cell. Great to have tuner built in. one less item to take camping. I rate the rig at 5 but the manual at 4. There are still some errors in the manual not covered by the errata on the website. My keyer was sluggish so was hard to program memory. After programing the memory, it would sometimes send small error. I contacted Steve weber (the rigs designer) and he is going to re-program my keyer chip. I assume all later models will have the newer version chip. Buy this rig and have fun!!
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WB8YYY
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Rating: 4/5
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Jun 16, 2008 09:11
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Nice Value Portable Rig
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Contrary to my nature, I ordered this rig soon after it was available. The receiver is similar to many previous QRP rigs (4 ICs and a xtal filter). The transmitter is multiple transistors in parallel to get 5 watts and appropriate matching networks. The heart of the rig is a DDS and microcontroller. And to boot it contains a manual antenna tuner.
Receiver - meets expectations - nice sound. no reason to doubt its sensitivity. expect the usual compromise in strong signal performance to keep battery current low. crystal filter rejection appears to be adequate for this class of rig.
Transmitter - i am getting at least 5 watts on 40 and 30, and 4.2 watts on 20m. the latter could likely be tweaked further, but it is close enough for me to stop.
VFO: with only the suggested audio procedure to align transmit and receive, it appears to be on frequency and reasonably aligned.
Use: while is has no tuning knob the up and down pushbuttons are indeed useful to set the frequency. yes it works ok when tuning up and down the band to look for signals. RIT and changing keyer speed work well and are easy to adjust. sending from memory is easy, but in recording the rig takes a longer character space than normal.
Bottom Line: for an occasional portable operator or someone wanting a simple but useful QRP rig - this may be an ideal choice. someone who operates a lot outdoors may prefer something further optimized in its user interface.
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