A bargain!

A bargain! How many times do you see a good bargain anymore? Have I got a bargain for you! Well, okay, I don't have a bargain; but Doug Hendricks KI6DS has a bargain for you!

Yesterday, Doug introduced through his company, QRPKits, a new line of QRP transceivers. These are the DC40A, the DC30A and the DC20A, for 40, 30 and 20 Meters respectively. The kits were designed by Steve Weber KJ1DV, the QRP Hall of Famer. The kit is of "through hole" construction (no SMD) on a quality silk screened circuit board. You get about 1 Watt output when you run it on 13.5 Volts. You can get more info from http://www.qrpkits.com/dc40a.html

Today, Chuck Carpenter W5USJ was running one in beacon mode on 14.062 MHz for a good part of the day. Chuck reported running the 1 Watt to a Butternut vertical antenna from his home QTH in Texas; and was soliciting reception reports via QRP-L(s). Keeping an eye on the e-mail reflectors, I saw he was getting decent reports from all over the country.

When I got home from work, I ran downstairs and flipped the K2 on. Sure as sugar, dialing in 14.062 MHz brought in the beacon. It was an honest 449 here at peaks between periods of QSB. This little guy was working well! How can you go wrong with a transceiver that's only going to set you back 35 bucks! And from the pictures, it looks like a good first time construction project if you want to get your feet wet in the world of kit building.

Thanks Doug and Steve - looks like another winner!

73 de Larry W2LJ

Blogger's Note: This morning , on the QRP e-mail reflectors, there was a post by Robert, F5UL. He copied Chuck's beacon message all the way in France! Not bad for 1 Watt from North East Texas. Depending upon the exact power output that Chuck had going, it's roughly 5132 Miles Per Watt!