January 21, 1994
Gang,
RadioKit Notes by Chuck Adams, K5FO
After helping one individual build one of these critters over
the phone, I got another call this week from another ham in
the mid-cities area of Dallas-Ft Worth about another one.
Background: This ham had been QRT for 20+ years, so in June
got active again by buying the MFJ-9020 at HamCom in this
area. He is having a blast using this little setup with a
simple dipole.
He bought the RadioKit QRP-30 kit. Since he was having some
difficulty, I drove 40 miles over to his place to take a look
at it. I wound up spending about 3 hours working on odds and
ends.
His wiring job was pretty good and I found only one solder bridge.
The spacing between some of the paths on the PC board were very tight.
Here are just some of my notes on the kit:
1. Very small board compared to other K1BQT kits and NN1G rig.
2. Not silk screened, not solder masked. Just a single sided board.
3. I'd personally grade the parts quality as a B.
4. I'd grade the board as a D. We had to drill four of the holes
that were missing. For a beginner with minimum tools, this would
really cause problems.
5. About a half-dozen components were missing.
6. I don't like the relay for QSK. I think the solid state switching
that everyone else uses is vastly superior. And cheaper too.
7. We didn't get to installation in case, as board was unfinished.
8. I think that everyone has to write a better set of instructions
on the art of winding toroids or refer the builder to the ARRL
handbook.
9. Schematic is wrong in some places, as I found out by tracing
paths on board and components. I knew from the schematic, upon
close examination, that there was no way this puppy was going to
work if the board was really setup per the schematic. I have
the K1BQT schematic, NN1G, and some of the others memorized. :-)
10. Air variable capacitor was shorted. I believe the plates are just
too close and would think that more than 30% of them would be shorted
from the factory. Also, this will tend to cause thermal drift problems
for the vfo.
More notes as he gets the missing parts and brings rig over for
tuneup and alignment and the 'smoke test'.
Overall, I'd spend my money on something else for a xcvr kit.
And I have. :-)
dit dit
Chuck Adams K5FO CP-60 wpm
adams@sgi.com
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