I am wondering what people believe represents best value for money in QRP kits. Rigs like the KX3 are excellent products but, here in the UK at least, are VERY expensive indeed. One can buy an FT1200 100W rig or IC-7100 for the same price as a fully loaded KX3 here.
Rigs like the BitX 20 or 17m SSB transceivers, are good value (<£200) and look easy to make from Hendricks Kits. Then again there are several very low cost kits from Kanga and from Walford amongst many.
Some are prepared to invest a lot on a QRP kit whereas others want to spend very little. What kit(s) have YOU enjoyed and do you feel represent good value for money? At the end of the day, the rig has to be genuinely useful. Some lower cost kits have VpERY compromised receivers making the end products of limited value, such as the Pixie. The Pixie and Micro80 were fun to make but (in my view) let down by the RX parts. I did not use a kit to build mine.
I'm interested in SDR and, I've enjoyed building the Softrock kits sold by fivedash.com. I think my next one may be a Peasberry SDR.
ReplyDeleteYes, I had completely forgotten about SDR kits!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed building Softrock Lite, and Softrock RX/TX Ensemble - very well written documentation, great design, excellent support. Peaberry is next.
ReplyDeleteI also read good reviews about ILER 40 / 20 transceiver by EA3GCY and considered building one.
To my opinion, KX3 is not really a kit - there is nothing to solder!
Hi Roger!
ReplyDeleteI have build and boxed, the MKARS 80, the MST-400, the BitX 20 and a couple more of Howes kits.
They are QRP in efficiency(ehm!) but they are really QRO in pleasure!
You are a designer/homebrewer yourself, you know what I mean!
The pleasure of homebrewing is the best value for money of any commercial rig.
A fully loaded Tim Walford kit might cost as much as a FT-817.
So?!
Radio is a technical hobby.
Chasing DXCC is not!
cheers and 73
Hi Roger,
ReplyDeleteIf built at least 20 rigs, but the best is always the latest. So in the moment I vote for the Ultimate 3 from Hans Summers. It is only a trx but ... This morning I managed to get heard by OH8GPK some 2056 km away. I forgot to mention that I was using only 5 MW, that's 411200 km per Watt and I used wspr without computer and the price of the kit was ~ 17£.
Beside that my main and only big rig is the K2.
Just finished building a Walford kit (Lydford on 40m) which was fun. However, it was not an easy kit to build at all, and needed the addition of an AGC board and a chassis. I also discovered I needed to either buy a lo-z mike for it as well, or redesign the mic preamp stage to suit a commonly available electret mike, which I did. I also ended up adding a DDS VFO too.. Despite all of that, it works really well, and I had loads of fun doing it. But cheap? No. Multiband? No. On the other hand, I mostly operate on just a couple of bands, so that was ok too
ReplyDeleteOak Hills Research 100A mono band cw transceivers. See e-ham reviews
ReplyDeleteIn my view there is only one contender. The ATS4 from Steve Weber, KD1JV.
ReplyDeletehttp://g4isj.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/ats-4b-building.html
This is closely followed by his superb Mountain Top Radio (MTR) of which I have two!
http://g4isj.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/mtr-field-trials.html
I'm anxiously awaiting the release of the 3 band MTR ver2 in April this year.
These radios are not toys.
I've made over 3000 QSOs on the ATS4 in the 2 years of ownership.
Their performance is amazing and I'd get rid of my KX3 long before I'd ever let the ATS4 go!
Only problem is they are like Hen's teeth...
72
Pete
G4ISJ