Kit radios

So you'd like a radio, but you can't afford a $1300 IC 7000. What's the alternative? Build it yourself!

This is a research page for kit radios...

manufacturers, designers, and kit lists

• Homebrew RF Test Equipment and Software
• http://amqrp.org/
• http://www.tapr.org/
• http://www.norcalqrp.org/
• http://radio.tentec.com/kits
  • http://radio.tentec.com/
• http://www.farcircuits.net/
• http://vectronics.com/
• http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/
• http://www.elecraft.com/
• http://ac6v.com/kits.htm
• http://www.danssmallpartsandkits.net/ hard to find parts
• http://www.smallwonderlabs.com/
• http://www.qrpproject.de/
• http://www.qsl.net/va3iul/Homebrew_RF_Circuit_Design_Ideas/Homebrew_RF_Circuit_Design_Ideas.htm

Design our own kit

It would be neat to have a cheap fixed frequency FM receiver tuned to the repeater that we could loan to new members.

• receive only
• fixed frequency(s)
• PL tone squelch?

PIC-A-STAR

DSP transceiver project

• http://www.g4nvh.net/
• http://www.tracey.org/wjt/temp/picastar-all.pdf 20 part article containing all art work
• http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/picastar/ yahoo group

radio kits

potential narrowing criteria:

• must do both CW and SSB
• must support multiple bands or be very cheap
• xmit > 1w ?

receivers

• two dollar regenerative receiver
• http://www.pan-tex.net/usr/r/receivers/index.htm
• QRP three bander: QST 10/1989 ARRL handbook ch 30 fig 2 $12.50 per board from FAR
• KK7B's Micro R2 receiver, QST Oct 2006 pg 28
  • CW or SSB, 100khz in a selected band
  • claims to be a better design, $80 for kit

RX/TX

• http://wb6dhw.com/For_Sale.html
• http://www.qrpme.com/
• No Excuses QRP Tranceiver: QST 12/2002 pg 28
• home brew UHF D-STAR (does not work)
• MicroT2: A Compact single band SSB transmitter QST Dec 2006
• HiMite / RockMite http://smallwonderlabs.com/HiMite_docs.htm QST Dec 2005
• low power PSK31 tranceiver
• http://www.cqbitx.blogspot.com/

TX only

• NS-40 Class E Transmitter
• RF modulator needs filters, but this could be an ATV transmitter

SDR

• http://zao.jp/radio/sft66db2/ (single band, no dsp)
• http://softrockradio.org simple SDR kit, appears to only cover CW portion of the bands
  • soft rock
  • http://www.m0kgk.co.uk/sdr/softrocks.php
  • manuals, schematics, etc., for most versions
• Firefly 20m and 30m cw optimized

Reasons for buying a kit instead of copying it and building it

It's a kit, you can make it yourself and just go get the parts, right? Here's why you'd want to buy a kit instead:

• Custom enclosures are cheap when mass produced; otherwise you gotta fit it in a box you found somewhere
• Some parts are hard to find, or hard to buy in single quantities
• Surface mount parts are more expensive to ship in single quantities than to solder on a PCB and ship the PCB.
• PCB's are hard to make. Yes, we can mill them, that works for two layer boards. But most people can't do that, and multilayer boards are still out of our reach.