Meet the Multus Proficio, a 5-Watt QRP SDR Transceiver from the USA.
The MK II sells for about $425 and I have the MK I which was a bit cheaper. I have had my radio for a couple of years now operating with HDSDR. It does a pretty good job. (Regrettably it will not operate with Thetis or SDR Console.) Add a 100-watt amp and a laptop and you have a nice functional POTA station ready to operate from some park.
Multus has a custom (homebrewed) Software Suite and also has tagged on to QUISK with a special CW Suite. Multus traces its roots back to the Peaberry SDR board which featured an on-board codec. No external sound cards were needed for the I/Q encode or decode for the Peaberry.
True you are 1/2 the way to an Icom IC7300 (non MKII, 7300) but the radio will give you lots of capability for 1/2 the price.
St. Louis
I did two tours of duty in St Louis totaling 11 years and it was all about the job. I was paid well and it was a good place to raise kids, but it had an unmistakable terrible mindset. That mindset was the basis of my saying St. Louis is a great place to retire from not to! In between tours was a job assignment in Mesa Arizona where the same saying applies.
The McDonnell Douglas plant was physically located at the Lambert St. Louis airport. I lived in St. Louis County and that meant a 35-mile commute one way. In wintertime it was a dangerous drive.
So back to the mindset. During the Gulf War, I used my drive time listening to the news. My thoughts were always with our troops and remembering my time in the Seabees. That was the problem: the local news (mindset).
The local news program on FM radio would start out: There was a major battle today outside of downtown Kuwait and now for the ball scores! The rest of the program was dedicated to baseball, football and hockey stories and/or including sports injuries and trades. Satellite radio would have cured that but not available in the early 1990's.
I am not a sports fan but am sure interested in world events. My interest peaked as two of my boys were draft age at that time. What a vacuum it was. Arizona followed a similar template with the overemphasis on sports.
We have the same issue today with the focus on old what is his name with stories like he spent two hours on X after midnight ranting about revenge and fair elections. Do we really care about cankles and suggested cognitive decline. What really is involved is his shifting the focus from the economy and people out of work to dribble about subjects that cause agita like renaming buildings.
The media is to blame for the lopsided reporting on the latest antics. Stop reporting on the trivia and ask why so many layoffs in January. Big question: While shooting Americans seems like a new ice (ICE) sport what is the long-term path to citizenship plan?
As Michael Douglas said in the movie The American President: "These are serious times for serious people." (This is not The Monty Python Clown Show!) Time to get serious and make your vote count in the Mid-terms.
Them that know, now don't care if you know.
73's
Pete N6QW
