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Show all reviews of the HB-1A by BD4RG
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You can write your own review
of the HB-1A by BD4RG.
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N1RX
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Rating: 4/5
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Nov 5, 2009 05:50
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Good value for the money
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Time owned: months
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I purchased one of these when a limited run of kits was offered on eBay at the beginning of Oct '09. This was a full kit, requiring the builder to mount all the SMD devices, etc. At the time the kits were shipped, the building documentation was somewhere between sketchy and non-existant. Still, I enjoy a good challenge. A number of kit buyers joined a Wiki, started by Anders, SM0HPL. The idea was to pool our experiences and help each other get them built and working.
I was able to get mine built and working, with virtually no trouble. In part, this was due to another builder "blazing the trail" and finding things to watch for first. Let your buddy walk ahead and fall in the hole... After building mine, I was immediately able to make contacts with the rig, and do some SWLing.
A post by DM2TA to the Wiki indicated that he had some trouble getting his to work at all, and made some measurements that indicated the preselector was not working properly. As for his statement about the PIC crystal not working until he removed the caps, I can only guess that the wrong caps, or a faulty crystal may have been included in his kit(s). I know of no other builders who have had this problem.
I -did- perform some VNA measurements on the preselector circuits as Andre mentioned. My findings agreed with him, that the input circuit does not tune well below about 6.5 MHz. Even still, I AM able to hear down there reasonably well. I have monitored Gander Air Traffic Control, and other transmissions. The RX sensitivity may be lower than it could be, but it works. On the 40, 30 and 20M ham bands, it works well. RX sensitivity is well below 1 uV. it also receives well on the other freqs from 6 to 16 MHz.
In summary, I bought the rig as a low-cost 3 band HF QRP rig, with wide band RX capability. It -IS- that. The radio design can be improved, and it has already been revised a few times during it's brief lifetime. The built in CW keyer could use a firmware upgrade. I expect that BD4RG will continue to refine the design. I find this rig a very good value for the money.
-Bruce N1RX
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