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Reviews For: NJ QRP Club PSK-80 "Warbler"

Category: QRP Radios (5 watts or less)

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Review Summary For : NJ QRP Club PSK-80 "Warbler"
Reviews: 16MSRP: $35
Description:
The New Jersey QRP Club has a wonderful new 80M implementation of the successful PSK-20 from Small Wonder Labs. The anncouncement by George Heron, N2APB, on October 16th has all the details. To be introducted at Pacificon 2000.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.njqrp.org/warbler/index.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00165
WB2VUN Rating: 2001-05-02
FUN KIT Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
The only thing this xcvr needs is a large 12 volt relay that maked a loud arcing CLICK when transmitting. I come from that era and need a loud noise to let me know things are working. Maybe a "squeel" on receive would be nice also. George Newton
KB4UTV Rating: 2001-04-16
Great Kit Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Great kit. No missing parts. This was my second attempt at kit building, built in about 5 hours. Made many QSO's the next evening all over New England (I am in NH). Lots of fun. Surface mount mixers not that bad to solder, pay attention when winding T1 and T2. Highly recommended!
N4QA Rating: 2001-01-09
Enjoyable experience Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Well, I finally got around to putting together my Warbler last weekend. The soldering of the two surface mount SA612A chips was interesting, considering that I used an eighth-inch chisel tip to solder the whole kit. The two rf transformers were fun to wind and install too. Worked a W6 (in Indiana) from here in Virginia after my first or second CQ. This is an amazing little rig and it will likely force me to improve my typing skills because it is so much fun to use. Congratulations to Dave Benson, NN1G, for another great rig design. I also congratulate the folks at NJQRP for a superb kitting job... perfect, right down to the resistor. No components missing or left over. Ample wire for winding the toroids. Just a very pleasurable building project.
73-1,
Bill, N4QA
WD4HVA Rating: 2000-12-22
Interesting design, good package! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This unit is a good example of a minimalist design with maximum performance sqeezed out of it. The instructions are well written and it was fun to put together. I didn't rush and it took about five or six hours total to complete. When I hooked up the rig for the smoke test, the only problem was the 12v supply had been unplugged behind the station desk. When I got that fixed, I was copying 95% from a station in the Minneapolis area - at least 700 miles from my station. It looks like the receiver works. Tonight I check out the transmitter section as soon as I get the other interface cable put together! I highly recommend this kit. You get at least twice the purchase price in enjoyment just putting the thing together and seeing the first signals scroll across the screen! Thanks to the group at NJQRP and N2APB and NN1G for making this available. Good Job!
N9VV Rating: 2000-11-10
Fantastic Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I received my kit on Wednesday and had to wait until Friday to play hookey from work and heat up the soldering station. Five hours later I had my first QSO with Stan AK0B in St. Charles, MO on 3580.66. I can see W1AW clearly on the Digipan display. Building was easy - but I don't like SMT parts :-( All the parts fit perfectly. You should refer to the "KitNotes" from the NJQRP club for IMPORTANT updates and helpful hints before starting. The "tri-filar" toroids are easy - but you might want to get some more attractive solid wire instead of the old telephone stripes ;-)

I heatily recommend the kit to experienced builders. Check out pictures of my building experience at http://home.uchicago.edu/~khopper/psk80project.html
See you on 3580.5 PSK
dit dit
de Ken N9VV <n9vv@arrl.net>
AK0B Rating: 2000-11-10
Excellent Buy - Lots FUN Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I received my kit last Saturday, built it in about 5 hours on Sunday, Align on Tuesday. Took a while to do T1 and T2. Main problem was making sure I had them installed correctly. All parts are quality with an excellent PC board that is silk screened. Unit was easy to align using W1AW signal. They have about a S1 signal hr and nice faint trace at 3581.5 khz. Using DigiPan ver 1.5 software.

Using a ZM-2 tuner, non-resonance end fed 150 ft long wire up about 15 ft hv worked ARK, OH, IN, IL and GA in the first two nights operating. The band has not been very active.

Receiver is an interesting design and works very well. I like the xmit RF output stage much better than the one in the PSK-20. Signal is clean with reasonable IMD reports.

I run the unit at 3 watts peak in TUNE on a WM-1 qrp watt meter.

My own TV set's color burst osc gives me QRN across the band with about S3 signal. I hope to filter it out at the TV set with some RS RF cores.

Excellent buy - FUN to operate - Easy to build

de Stan AK0B ak0b@swbell.net