Monday, March 18, 2024

Long-awaited QMX arrives

Ordered in March, my pre-built QRP Labs QMX arrived today.

There is a much shorter waiting time for those who order the kit version of this rig.

It's a 20-80m version and I will be putting it through its paces on CW over the next few days and will eventually configure it for FT8.

I was happy to see that a test sheet was included, indicating the results of various parameters obtained before it was shipped to me. 

The QMX is almost identical in size to the (tr)uSDX and they cover the same 5 bands. However, I believe the similarities will end there with the QMX having drastically better performance in every way. 

Monday, March 11, 2024

The POTA ride begins

Packed up and ready to roll
 

Two-score and seven years ago, the Texas Department of Public Safety conveyed forth upon my person a new motorcycle license, conceived in Smith County and dedicated to the proposition that even a 15 year-old kid could roam about freely on two wheels, powered by an internal combustion engine.

I am now engaged in a great reminiscence to determine whether that freedom, or any freedom so conceived, can long endure. It is altogether fitting and proper that I should do this.

And so agrees the Little Lady, even if I don't paraphrase old Abe.

The motorcycles in the garage have changed much over the years, from my old Honda CB100. The current one sports a full tank of gas and a complete POTA station.

In 1973, that would've meant lashing an FT-101 onto the tiny Honda. But today it's a KX2 and a ground-mounted vertical in the rear trunk of my R1150RT. Weighs next to nothing.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

mcHF clone, right out of the box

My original - genuine! - mcHF has gone to that great playground in the sky, where all radios emanate honest 599 signals on all bands. After so many years of performance-enhancing (and corrective) surgery, the poor radio was ready to be put to pasture.

To replace it, I ordered one of the many clones and received it yesterday.

I will need to do a full alignment on the radio - the displayed frequency differs from the actual, the upper sideband differs greatly from the lower on CW in terms of where zero beat occurs and the bar graph (RF Out and SWR) is way off on transmit (though the receive S-meter seems to work well).

All of these things are correctable and detailed alignment procedures are available online.

But, right out of the box, I'm easily making CW QSO's on all bands. Quality control of these clones is a long-standing concern. Connect Systems used to sell them to US buyers but will no longer do so due to numerous problems with many of them. In fact, they now have 7 problematic mcHF clones for sale.

So I wondered how mine might fare, straight outta da box. So far, so good:


I will do the alignment upon my return from Texas in a week or two. I cut Daytona Bike Week short - not my scene at all - so I'll be leaving for (and returning from) TX sooner than planned, as the UHSDR alignment and RadioKit-20 construction await.

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Monday, March 4, 2024

The final death of CQ Magazine

The website for CQ Magazine has been down for several days now and users of their domain for email addresses now report that those addresses are no longer functional.

One columnist reports that they have been on hold since October 2023.

The demise of CQ Magazine has been a long time in the making with intermittently missed issues being the norm for over four years now. 

I had an online subscription to the magazine for two years and thoroughly enjoyed each issue. The articles were top-notch and covered a more diverse range of topics than QST. It was also refreshingly clean of the politics of ham radio - I'm not so much put-off by that topic but am bored to tears by it, and probably won't be renewing my ARRL membership.

So "good-bye" to CQ, now gone the way of Ham Radio, Ham Radio Horizons and 73 Magazine.

The good ones die off; mediocrity lives on.

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Monday, February 26, 2024

20m 'Explorer' kit arrives

I received my Radio-Kits Explorer kit (20 meters) in the mail today and my first impression is, "Man, that's a lot of parts!"

Everything is very well-packed with all parts separated into 8 bags, each with a label that describes the contents.

The circuit board is high quality and has 4 pre-installed parts, three of which are surface-mount devices. There are no SMD's for the builder to install.