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Reviews For: QRP Labs QCX kit

Category: QRP Radios (5 watts or less)

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Review Summary For : QRP Labs QCX kit
Reviews: 26MSRP: $49
Description:
QCX 5W CW transceiver kit
Product is in production
More Info: http://qrp-labs.com/qcx.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
15264.9
K2PI Rating: 2018-03-12
QCX Transceiver kit - an impressive feature-rich kit Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is a review about the QRP Labs QCX (Qrp Labs Cw Xcvr) kit for 40 meters. Functionally, and except for some band specific parts and coil windings, this kit is exactly the same as any other QCX kit. These are very popular kits, and although very reasonably priced, expect to wait some time, up to a month or more, for your kit to arrive.

The QCX is an impressive kit with a construction and operation manual that is on par (I think in some ways better) than many of the Heath and Elecraft manuals I have used in other kit builds. The manual is arranged very deliberately to step you through populating the board in a fashion that minimizes confusion, and keeps the frustration low. The illustrations are of very high quality, including illustrations, with component legends,for both the front and the back of the board. What a great troubleshooting aid those pictures can be.

The one more complicated aspect of the build, the winding of the T1 transformer, is more intimidating in description than actual practice. If you can count to a reasonably high number without losing your place, and can thread a fine copper wire through the eye of a reasonable-sized toroid, you can easily do this part of the build. At the end, you'll have to place 8 transformer wires from this toroid onto the board into 8 small holes without mixing them up. Testing these for continuity and proper placement with a VOM is pretty essential before you solder those leads down. Hans Summers, G0UPL, the designer of the kit and owner of QRP Labs, has recently told owners that building T1 was put in a place in the build where builder confidence had been buoyed by previous work on less complex components, but acknowledges that building and placing T1 as a first step is considerably easier. Your choice if you want to do that first. Other parts of the build require straightforward component placement (some of which must be placed according to pin-out or polarity) and good soldering skills.

All told, it took me 4 weeknights and half of a Saturday to build my kit, which I did very slowly and methodically. Perhaps a total of 12-14 hours. I am not a fast builder. Your speed probably will exceed mine.

At $49.00 U.S., this is a very inexpensive kit for the value and features (more on that later), but I recommend that you more than double that investment if you do not have some things on hand first to make this build a bit easier.

Among these, first and foremost, is a printed copy of the manual, preferably bound, and in color. You can download the manual from the QRP Labs website when you order your kit and send it to a office superstore (Staples in the U.S. for instance) and they will professionally print and bind this impressive manual for about another $45.00. This made construction so much easier because I could mark things off as I added them to the board, something harder to do on a PDF displayed on a computer monitor. After the build, the printed manual also becomes your general operation and reference manual. By the way, make sure the kit board revision you are getting matches the manual you print - revisions don't happen often, but I managed to catch Hans changing boards, and the Rev 3 board I received did not match the build in my V2 manual. Helpfully, Hans provided an errata sheet in e-mail, which worked perfectly, so I was not required to spend any more money for a new manual. As I've learned, this is typical of his helpfulness towards his customers and the kit building community in general. What a helpful gentleman!

2nd, is a good circuit board holder. The one I bought is on Amazon for about $13.00 from Aven, and it was perfect for the QCX. Being able to rotate the board is critical as you build. This holder can do that.

3rd is a good lighted magnifier tensor lamp, or a head band with light and lenss (I found that the $20 I spent on Amazon for the "Yoctosun head mount magnifier with 2 LED Professional Jeweler's Loupe Light Bracket and Headband are interchangeable" (gotta love the literalness of the Chinese-to-English translators) was money well spent.

Finally, I'm assuming you wouldn't be ordering a kit without having a good quality pencil iron of reasonably small size, but I would think carefully about making sure you have a small tip on any soldering iron because board space is very tight in some places.

So, for an investment of about $49.00 plus printing and parts totaling another $60 or so, what do you get?

You get an amazingly compact, highly feature rich and very handy single-band CW and WSPR rig that would blow you away at a price point three times as high, but will floor you for what you get for less than 50 dollars. The QCX has too many clever features to detail here (and that is done well on Hans' website), but the neatest little touches tell you a lot about the care and thought that went into this kit. These include a replaceable or programmable Microprocessor with custom firmware, the little on board micro-switch CW key, the on board suite of test equipment used to align the transceiver (DVM, Frequency Counter, Signal Generator), the 200Hz CW filter, the very intuitive alignment process, and other nice touches that make this a real keeper. I have had a great time with this rig on the air, with contacts all over the world, which I am sure impresses no one, but the 4-5 Watt CW note is sharp, clear, free of artifacts, and the receiver is plenty sensitive. This is no toy, and if packaged in an appropriate case, would pass for a much more expensive single-band rig like those sold by several other manufacturers. I have used my QCX for literally days with a 3AH Bioenno battery, which I never depleted despite frequent use. It's a good backpacking or mountain topping rig.

In fact, I was so impressed, that I ordered two more QCX radios because building them is as fun as using them. My next kits are for 20M and 30M, and that's from someone who already has an FT-817ND which I dearly love. These QCX rigs are just the best bargain I've seen in Amateur Radio in a long time. As an active SKCC member, and sometime QRP'er, this rig impresses, as does Hans and his superb customer service.

You won't regret buying one of these and putting the time in to build it.

73
Harv
K2PI
N2EIK Rating: 2018-01-11
Cant beat the value Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought the 20 meter kit un-opened from another ham that idnt feel comfortable assembling it. I would have rather have had 30 or 40 meter but decided to roll with 20. Assembly only took a few hours, depends on the person. The biggest pain in the butt is the rx torrid, its not fun, LOL.
The documentation online is outstanding.
Fired it up, alignment is straightforward.
RX sensitivity is excellent. A few bells and whistles in the menu. Really worth 50 bucks for sure! I was contemplating converting this to 40 or 30 meter, a few caps and torrids but for $50 I will just pop for a new kit.
People new to QRP, remember... Good feedline and a great antenna is a MUST.
W0WCA Rating: 2018-01-09
Outstanding kit Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
10 or 12 hours over 19 days. (I’m old and tire easily)
Approximately 180 parts. (Little guys)
All work done using 10x magnifier hood. (And I have 20-20 vision in my good eye)
Finest tip on my 15W grounded soldering iron.
T1 is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. (Ultimately it was fine)
One error for yours truly. (Put the voltage regulator in backwards. this was a bitch to fix)
Two wrong parts in kit. (Digi Key is our friend)
Two inductors are a different value than called for. (But I soldered ‘em in anyway.
On-line manual runs 138 pages and is incredibly detailed!
First 62 pages put the pup together.
Pages 67 through 138 are driving instructions. (Gonna take me a few to wade through this)
Receives quite well and copies good code exceptionally well.
Transmits 4 watts with 12 volt battery. (expect 5W out mit 13.8V)
Lots of opportunity for error here. (So work slowly and carefully)
Not recommended for beginners. (Or the faint of heart)
I am elated mit the finished product!
KB1OIQ Rating: 2018-01-07
Extremely well documented! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I built the QCX for the 80m band, and it puts out about 3.5-4.0 watts when powered by a 13.8V power supply. It took me about 8-10 hours to build it. The instructions were absolutely superb! Each section that describes a part to be installed includes a diagram of the board, with the part to be installed highlighted. The most challenging part to construct and install is the T-1 transformer, and the instructions go into great detail to make this easier to do. The menu system is quite easy to navigate, and the built-in alignment tools make it quite easy for anybody to properly adjust this radio before putting it on the air. Headphone users beware - the audio output can be quite loud! I recommend the use of some type of audio limiting circuit between your headphones and this radio (as is true of most QRP kit radios). Software hackers will be disappointed that the source code for this rig is not available as of this writing. A case is not supplied, but 3D printer owners will appreciate that a couple of cases can be found on Thingiverse. This kit is a great value and you'll have a lot of fun with it.
KU3V Rating: 2018-01-05
Superb CW Transceiver for the Price Point Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Here is what http://qrp-labs.com/ says about their new release of the "QCX single-band 5W CW transceiver kit, with WSPR beacon and built-in alignment/test equipment. Available for 80, 60, 40, 30, 20 or 17m bands. It has rotary encoder synthesised tuning, VFO A/B/Split, Iambic keyer, CW decoder, and more..." The kit came well organized with all parts available. The manual (You download from their site) is amazing. ~130 pages of details and pictures describing what to do for a successful build. My kit was for 40m. It took about 8-10 hours to build. The kit does not come with a case but they show plenty of pictures people have supplied of their methods. Some HAMS include dimensions, links etc to what case they choose or built themselves. The unit comes already programmed and is amazing. I like the easy to understand menu that you can click through. The screen is a nice light blue screen that is well lit. Also the 200 HZ filter is very nice. My unit puts out 3 watts. But with a higher supply voltage you get ~5 watts output. The unit even comes with a microswitch that is soldered onto the circuit board. You can use that if you wish as your straight key. Or you can plug one in or any other style key you desire. For $49 this is an amazing piece of kit.
VE3EGA Rating: 2017-12-03
Excellent Kit! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This (UK) kit is has outstanding features, is straightforward to build and a Joy to operate.

A Single Band CW Radio designed by Hans Summer of QRP Labs (you choose the band) was originally produced for "YOTA 17" and 90 Kits were built by young people as part of the program. Since then the QRP folks have taken a special interest in this amazing radio and (at the time of writing Dec 2017) 1453 Kits have been shipped - visit:

https://www.qrp-labs.com/qcx.html

The Kit rivals many "Big Rigs" in terms of features.. Built in Alignment Software makes it a breeze to get on the air quickly. See the video here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlMOZistkCs

This one's a "keeper" - grab one fast!