Today I want to pass gas about one of my homebrew transceivers. This specific radio was built to essentially replicate a radio built about 20 years ago, where the earlier 20M version was 4X4X8 and had an LCD display.
A ham who had seen this earlier rig lost his job and essentially sold all of his ham equipment to feed his family. I sent him the rig so he could still get on the air. Thus, the desire to replace the rig but put it on 40M.
This radio is a bit bigger than the original and of course has the color TFT display and two VFO's with memory. The 2nd VFO boots up on the 40M FT-8 frequency and has three sets of J310's wired as a Dual Gate MOSFET and all have trimmer pots to optimize their gain.
The rig is built on two boards with the upper board having the IRF510. For a heat sink I used a thick aluminum plate that is bolted to the underside of the top board. This second unit has a compact look and would work pretty well for a POTA or SOTA event running at 5 watts.
Needless to say, it indeed would be a Chick Magnet! Some early photos during construction.
The Color TFT has undergone several iterations, and the current one has a black background to enhance readability.
This is a good example of what can be done when you know stuff. You can know stuff by doing stuff, making mistakes and learning from the whole process.
TYGNYBNT. Don't eat your pet!
73's
Pete N6QW