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.

I know it’s been a while, but I promise I’m not dead. I’ve just been working on other non-techy stuff lately. There are a few projects that I’ve been working on here and there that I’ll post soon. I’ve been playing around with some of the cheap aliexpress kits like automatic antenna tuners and rf amplifiers. I also bought a few lora boards and have one set up as a satellite ground station and a few others running as a mesh network.

I picked up a few radio kits off of Aliexpress a while back. I started a few and left them in various states of partial assembly.