[CW] Good CW QRP Rig...

[John J. McDonough]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gene Buckle" <geneb at deltasoft.com>
Subject: Re: [CW] Good CW QRP Rig...


> I'm looking for something small - isn't the K1 pretty close to a fullsize
> radio?

Depends on what you call small.  The K1 isn't exactly huge, perhaps 1/2"
taller than a 706 and about two thirds as wide.  Getting out my ruler ...
about 7" deep, including all the projections (knobs and BNC connector),
5-1/4 wide and 2-1/4 high.  The main selling point of the K1 is that there
is so much in a single package.  The K1 can be outfitted with 4 bands,
internal batteries, and an automatic antenna tuner.  It's quite a bit
smaller than the OHR, and the OHR doesn't have the internal batteries or
tuner, so for something easy to carry, the K1 is pretty nice.

However, it is a whole bunch bigger than a Rock-Mite, and a pile more
expensive, too.

Personally, for a lunchtime jaunt I would much prefer the K1 to the
RockMite.  Not much fiddling around to get set up, complete coverage of the
CW portion of the bands (mine is an old one, only 2 bands, 20 and 40), and
an honest 6 or 7 watts, although on the internal batteries it's best to keep
it down to 3.  But heck, on 20 CW, 3 watts is about all you can use anyway.
The RockMite is crystal controlled which makes for much more challenging QRP
contacts at 500 mw.  On a good day, 500mw isn't all that bad on 20, but
without a little frequency agility, it could be pretty frustrating.  On the
other hand, it is small!

For that sort of size, you might consider Steve Weber's AT Sprint.  It's 4
bands, and similar in size to the Rock Mite.  The current version is sold
out so you might have to go looking on eBay, but Steve claims to be working
on a newer, better version.

Personally, I wouldn't go with the OHR (Marshall isn't going to like me for
saying this).  It seems like a lot of folks have trouble getting those
working, although once working, the folks that have them do seem to like
them.  Looks to me like not so much rig for the money, tho.

Just my prejudices

Oh yeah ... if you want one of any of these already built, besides eBay the
other place to look is to post a message on QRP-L.  If you watch QRP-L,
rather than posting, you might catch something, but things that people try
to sell on QRP-L seem to go very, very fast, so you need to be quick on the
trigger.

72/73 de WB8RCR    http://www.qsl.net/wb8rcr
didileydadidah     QRP-L #1446 Code Warriors #35