A while back, I picked up a cheap amplifier kit off aliexpress for a few bucks and finally got around to finishing it. It will supposedly put out 70 watts using a pair of IRF530N mosfets. The build itself was pretty straight forward. The surface mount components were already soldered on the board. They have these weird metal tubes that you have to assemble and solder to PC board material that make up one of the turns to the transformer.

Last night, I tried my hand at some FT8 with the new QDX. I called CQ a few times and got a reply. Just as I finished the first QSO, the QDX died and my power supply was showing a short. I opened up the case and could smell the magic smoke. I couldn’t see any obvious cause, but I figured it would be one of the output transistors since I’ve already had to replace them once.

I finally received the QDX kit that I ordered back in July. This is the first kit that I’ve purchased from QRP Labs. First impressions were good. The kit was packaged well and seemed to be good quality. The transceiver itself was a lot smaller than I expected. The board that I received was revision 3a. When reviewing the excellent documentation and build guide, I found that this board revision contained a short, which is disappointing.

I got new toys!

I recently picked up a Commodore 16 at an estate sale for a pretty good price. When I got it, it looked like it was covered in 35 years of dirt and grime. The image below is after a quick wipe down. They didn’t have the power supply for it, which was fine. I decided to go ahead and clean it up before attempting to power it on. The inside was pretty gross too.

I don’t remember where I originally picked up this little Motorola speaker, but I found it again while digging through a box of stuff and figured I could make use of it on the bench. The model of the speaker is TSN1003A. I couldn’t find much info about it and I didn’t have a connector that would fit it, so I decided to hack it up and put my own connectors on it.