My thoughts on homebrewing Amateur Radio HF Rig

My thoughts on homebrewing Amateur Radio HF Rig

I was very active on the band and an ardent homebrewer in my younger days as I could not afford a commercial rig! I had started off with a solid state VU2VWN QRP which was very popular at that time. Later I upgraded to a hybrid QRO with parts of the VU2VWN QRP and a 3 x 807 vacuum tube RF amplifier and could work a lot DX, mostly on CW. Now I am trying to return to hamdom after retirement from morning QTH.

Being decades older I am on the lookout for semi assembled kits and found some at https://www.hfsignals.com/. They are giving several options like building from scratch to buying a semi-assembled version which will need some tweaking up after receipt. I also found that at least one VU2 ham is using it as mentioned on QSL net page of the ham. This one is for SSB and CW, while I never had the chance to homebrew SSB earlier, though I had received a circuit from one of my friends.

The rig which I am thinking of is µBITX V6 which they mention is for SSB and CW. It seems to be a good QRP with 10 Watts PEP on lower HF bands and 5 Watts on 28 MHz. It is an Arduino Nano controller based transceiver. They have also provided detailed circuit diagrams and descriptions of how it works. I am preparing this short video in the hope that it will help newcomers who wish to come online, but cannot afford a commercial one.

Of course this is not a paid promotional video and I have not used the equipment yet, though I am planning to try it out sooner or later. Another reason for putting this video is to get opinion from numerous homebrewers out there and possibly from those who have actually used it substantially. That input will give me an encouragement to go ahead with the project.

Update: It did not work out as the kit was not available!