Ok, so I fell hard for one of these little ditties, the QCX-Mini 5W QRP (that means “low power”, 5W or less) CW (that means “morse code only”) transceiver (it can send, and receive) radio.
Well, mine arrived yesterday and I wasted no time building it:
I need to get a better dummy load, and then do some twiddling on the inductors to optimize the power output - they’re hand-wound and need some finessing to adjust everything, apparently, but the unit powers up ok and went through the basic alignment process on the receiver side looking “normal”. When I tweak the output power I’ll re-align using a specific gain setting he didn’t write in the manual but used on his video… but my proper dummy load should be arriving with my main QRP rig, of which more later.
For now, this is an ongoing build, and I’ll post updates as I figure this little bugger out. I’ve got a funky paddle in the works for it too, and some hairbrained antenna ideas.