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Reviews For: Small Wonder Labs White Mountain SSB Txcvr

Category: QRP Radios (5 watts or less)

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Review Summary For : Small Wonder Labs White Mountain SSB Txcvr
Reviews: 5MSRP: 165.00
Description:
75/20M SSB QRP KIT
Product is not in production
More Info: http://www.smallwonderlabs.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0054.6
5R8GQ Rating: 2008-02-09
Best in it's class Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The WM SSB QRP series rigs by SWL are the best in their class, SSB XCVR kits in the $125 range. Great performance, hot receiver, AGC (no SSB QRP kit save Elecraft has that today. Real RF transistors in the finals, not quirky & cheap IRF510 power mosfet. Super quality board, components, housing, instructions.
I own two of the 20m versions and one of the 40m versions and they work great.
Fun to build with terrific instructions and Dave's e-mail help. You won't believe what you can hear and work with these beauties.
If you see one for sale.....just buy it!
KB1GMX Rating: 2006-04-20
Excellent, minor nits Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I built mine (20m) as an exciter for a TenTec 1208
20m to 6m transverter. I had a lot of fun using that configuration. Audio reports were good and
with the transverter gain recive sensitivity was
outstanding. Power drain is very low making it a good as a battery powered radio.

Minor nits, since the TX and RX carrier osc are seperate there was an anoying problem of TX offset from teh RX frequency. Adding RIT helped. LAter modification was to make the carrier osc common to both RX and TX solving the offest problem. Another problem was AGC pumping and pops, I would later redesign the AGC for a more sophisticated audio agc.

Recently I decided that this handy little transceiver would be killer on 6M. The mods were
replace VFO with a PLL based 42mhz LO and rewind the toroids for the rx and TX for 6m operation. This worked very well with excellent recieve sensitivity, low reciver noise an about 500mw of power out. While the power out was low the audio reports are excellent. The feature of this was low power dran on RX and very modest power needs on TX making it excellent for battery operation
using a 12V 2AH gell cell.

Shame it's no longer available. I'm having fun using it and experimenting with it.

While the rating system is 4 or 5 I'd give it a 4.5 as it was an outstanding value and fun to use.

Allison
G3CWI Rating: 2004-05-11
Nice radio, nice kit Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have been meaning to finish this radio for ages. Having done so I am pleased with the results. The VFO coil needed one less turn than the instructions indicated but apart from that it was a perfect kit. The RX is good and is perhaps only let down by the audio-derived AGC but that's a minor gripe. I have built a few of Dave's kits and they have all been well designed and fun. I'm now looking forward to some opportunities to use this radio out in the field.
N1KSN Rating: 2002-11-14
A fun and instructive rig Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I just finished building this little SSB rig and have thoroughly enjoyed building and operating it. Dave's step-test-step approach to construction works very well, and I had no problems worth noting. To the best I can measure, I get a full 3 watts PEP from it and the frequency coverage is from 14.167 to 14.345 or so. The built in frequency annunciator (in Morse) is only about 2 KHz high. (The enclosure kit as such is no longer available, but the hardware parts, freq mite, and the enclosure w/o panel holes can still be purchased as a package.)

Alignment has always been my major weakness as a kit builder, but I managed to get this one set up right. I did learn how much a teeny-tiny change in the mic gain trim pot can make when I did an on-the-air test. Once I had it set right, I got consistently good reports on the audio quality using an ICOM HM-54 speaker mic.

I purchased the rig for bicycle mobile, but it is getting cold in Wisconsin, so that will wait for Spring. I've been operating at my station with a ZM-2 tuner, 7 Ah gel cell, and 20m Hamstick dipole up 22 feet. So far I've had good reports from Nebraska, North Carolina, Florida, New York, and Vermont. I managed to bag a rare IOTA station just as he came on the air (VY0/W2 something). I know the receiver is good, because this morning I heard India. (I'm not ready to try breaking pileups yet.) Considering my antenna, this speaks well of the RX sensitivity.

I can hardly wait to try this rig out on my bicycle. Its current drain will be considerably less than my FT-817, so my gel cell will last longer. And I'll be a bit less nervous about mounting it on the handlebars, although I'm getting to like this little rig so much I'd just hate for anything to happen to it.

Three watt SSB on 20m? Insanity? No, fun!

K7NTW Rating: 2000-02-15
Lives up to the high standards of current design a Time Owned: unknown months.
I just finished building the WM-20 20 meter version of this SSB transciever. The manual is fun to read and laid out in a nice build a section test a section format. with lots of building tips scattered in the text. I would suggest you read the entire manual before starting construction. I wound up all the torroids in a one evening session before I started but just my preference to do it this way. I had no problem with the soldering but really appreciated having a temperature controlled iron with a small tip. I put the kit together in three sessions but the instructions are set up for about seven evenings or relaxed building. I start off slow but the "fever" overtakes and burn flux all day till it's done. That means no household chores get done for a while because when you get this puppy put together you are going to want to operate it, show it off to your buddies on and off the air. The receiver is hot and is only slightly quick tuning. I opted for the enclosure kit which includes the morse freq anouncer, and 10 turn tuning pot along with everyting else it takes to make the board kit play. Of course you supply the speaker mike. I repaired TV's and stereos over at a buddys garage repair shop for two Saturdays found I now had enough money for the board and enclosure kit plus ! I am 56 years old and wear glasses so I found a pair of binocular magnifiers a great help. Using the magnifiers I dont create solder bridges. Some of the writting on the monolithic caps is very small.I recommend the parts be inventoried and sorted befor starting. Although I didn't do it the parts could be sorted into the seven sections first making seven "mini-kits". I only had to remove one turn from the VFO coil to put it on frequency. All others tuned up fine. I've received good reports and used the kit in the QRP ARCI Winter SSB Fireside Sprint. 20M was really crowded but I managed 9 contacts for my first SSB QRP contest. From WA a MD contact was the longest QRP- QRP QSO. After the contest I've worked Belize and Siberia so you will have no problems making contacts with this rig. You have to think you are loud when you run QRP as it puts you into the frame of mind that makes you sucessful. I hope you have as much fun as I have had building and operating your White Mountain SSB transciever. If you E-Mail me at bmonroe@ncia.com I will answer your question.