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. 

It's not likely that I'll finish this kit until sometime in April. March is occupied with two motorcycle road trips: Daytona Bike Week with Bob WK3P + two others, and, if I survive that, a solo trip home to Texas for visiting my peeps.

So April is for soldering.

I'm hoping that other builders of this kit will finish earlier than I'll be able to so that I can read their reports. If I hear of any, I'll post them here.

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4 comments:

  1. Hi John, hope you're well! I actually have one of these in the post, so I'm excited to see how you get on with it and hopefully learn from your construction posts. I have no electronics knowledge, but I just love building kits like these. I've done a couple of QDX's and a QCX from QRP Labs and some Kanga Kits. Hope this one works out as well as the others.

    Take care, Tom, M7MCQ
    www.m7mcq.com

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    1. Hello Tom, if you've successfully built a QDX I don't think you'll be intimidated by this kit - there is more circuit board real estate on the Explorer than the QDX. I'm looking forward to reading about your experience with the build and operation. I think the last all-mode kit I built was an HW-9 30 years ago...since then, they've all been CW-only kits.

      73,
      John

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  2. Hi John,
    Based on your posts so far I am going to order a 40 meter version, thank you.
    73, Glen, VK1FB

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    1. Hello Glen - I'm looking forward to getting it built and OTA, though it'll be a while. I have started winding the coils though. Please keep me posted on how yours comes along. Good luck and 73,
      John

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