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Monday night was club night

I must have been a bit tired from the long bike ride I did at the weekend but I offered to run a construction evening based on a simple kit. This was really to help build confidence in soldering and making ‘stuff’ that might be handy for the up and coming ham’s shack.

Anyone who knows me will know that I can build a kit but can’t design a circuit for toffee. So the hunt for a suitable kit began, Julian, G4ILO happened to mention at nerly the same time that a QRSS TX is available through Hans Summers which looks like a cheap and simple one to go for and a company called radio kits do a simple needle based SWR kit or a digital one.

The crucial thing is to be able to talk around the principle of operation as well as the construction otherwise the exercise is missing a trick. I’ll be ordering the bits very shortly and making sure I know they work long before I let myself in for an overly complicated explanation to a bunch of blank faces. Especially if they are wielding soldering irons.

Price is obviously an issue as the club has members with a variety of incomes, but if there are other kits about that could be made up. I would really like to hear of an 4m FM TXRX’s that can be built. For some reason most of the members have an obsession with that band. Otherwise its a suitable SSB HF rig for a long term project. First off though is the easy one. Famous last words?