This 30m QRSS Transmitter Kit was produced by Steve G0XAR and Hans G0UPL. We produced 100 kits and they were sold out very quickly at Dayton FDIM 2010 following my FDIM presentation on QRSS on Thursday 13-May-10. Now available again:

KIT STATUS:
30m: SOLD OUT (more components on order)
40m and 80m: Small quantities remain
The price is: 10 GBP + shipping. This is approximately 12 EUR or 15 USD.

Please email Steve G0XAR at the following address for final details:

The kit contains a keyer chip programmed with the buyer's callsign, all components, and a 2.5 x 2-inch PCB to build my QRSS transmitter project I took with me to Grenada (Caribbean) and Turkey during trips in 2009, see following links: Tropical Beacon, Mediterranean Beacon, QRSS Keyer.

CLICK HERE to see the Kit Instructions. Click the images below to see the circuit diagram, photos of the kit contents and board built by Dave Clausen W2VV, and some photos of the 'scope output and frequency counter displays from my own kit build.

The Dayton FDIM 2010 Pileup

I was upstairs in my room programming keyer chips for as many of the people who'd signed up after my talk as possible, right up to the opening of the vendor evening at 8pm. I took the laptop and all the kits downstairs to the conference room and took a seat next to George G3RJV on the G-QRP club table. Immediately a long line formed! So here's some photos of the pileup at Dayton FDIM as I struggled to work through the line of patient QRP'ers who wanted a kit:

Here's a couple of pictures of me in the middle of my presentation! (Right photo is from the NT7S blog)

Builder's comments:

Jay Sissom W9IUF in Bloomington IN (locator EM69qc) is thought to be the first kit builder to get on air! He writes: "Woo Hoo!  It worked!  I attended the Four Days In May event at Dayton this year. Hans G0UPL gave a talk about QRSS and offered beacon kits for sale. I built one and put it on the air yesterday. It is running 50mW into a dipole in my house. His kit was easy to put together and as you can see, it works. The hardest part was adjusting the frequency (well winding 35 turns on L1 was challenging)".

Jonathan KX1KIX took TWO of the kits and comments: "I thank Rex at QRPME for making the nice little "toroid holder".  makes winding these cores a bit easier. Also, as soon as I wound my toroids, I put some hot glue in there to keep them from loosening up on me.  Just cut off a small piece of glue stick and used a heat gun - they worked fine". Jonathan has a blog about building the kit, see http://kb1kix.net/blog/?p=476

Bill, WA4KBD writes: "it works perfectly on 10.140.045. I'm runnning 114 mw to a dipole currently, and didn't push it past 155 mw while adjusting R8". Bill sent some photos of his kit, which he enclosed in an Altoids mint tin:

Ed K9EW put his kit in a nice blue box (click the photos below). The board mounted to the right of the beacon kit PCB is a 5V regulator, which also powers a green "power on" LED. The photo on the right is an image showing Ed at 10,140,029/135 or so, on the online grabber of Bruce W1BW. Bruce is in Concord, MA (FN42hl) at a distance of 849 miles from Ed's beacon.

Stephen NM7J / HS0ZHB hopes to be the first QRSS station in Thailand.

Ken W4DU housed his QRSS beacon kit in a clear plastic enclosure, measuring 3 1/8 " X 3 1/8". He writes: "I paid about $1.00 each.  I like them because they slide apart in to two pieces for easy pcb installation and allow people to look without touching components!! Ideal for a QRP Forum when you pass the gear around."

Dave Clausen W2VV has a nice write-up on NYC Resistor and some excellent photos here. Dave comments: "One issue that came up is that I had a hard time getting my oscillator frequency down to 10.140.050 MHz.  Initially I couldn't get it below 10.140.220.  I removed and re-wound L1 with 38 turns but that only lowered me to about 10.140.100.  So I added a 10pF capacitor across C9 and that brought my min frequency down below 10.140.000 (easily raised by tuning C9)."

Here's a nice screenshot, captured by Bill W4HBK. It shows three of the kits, WA8OFU at the bottom, W8BH middle and W9IUF top.

NOTES on building the kit:

Some points to mention, about the kit:

1) The potentiometer potentiometer in the kit doesn't quite fit the holes on the PCB. The two holes near the edge of the board are too small. The orientation of the potentiometer trimmer is supposed to be with the wiper towards the right (near R6). The wiper connection does fit its hole. The easiest way to fit this trimmer is to cut off the two pins that will fit those two small holes. Leave about 1/4-inch remaining of the trimmer pins. That's a nice thick piece remaining, which should sit nicely on the PCB when the trimmer is in place. Then you can slip through a couple of wires (use some of the off-cuts from the resistors) into the holes, and solder the track side to the PCB track, and the component side to the remainder of the trimmer pin. Much easier to do, than to explain in words.

2) The colour codes on the resistors are 5-bars not 4. So a little harder to read, if you're not used to it. The colour codes are:

R1: 470K: Yellow-Purple-Yellow-Gold (usual 4-bar code)
R2: 10K: Brown-Black-Black-Red-Brown
R3: 180-ohm: Brown-Grey-Black-Black-Brown
R4: 330-ohm: Orange-Orange-Black-Black-Brown
R5: 150-ohm: Brown-Green-Black-Black-Brown
R6: 6.8K: Blue-Grey-Black-Brown-Brown
R7: 12K: Brown-Red-Black-Red-Brown

3) The wire size in the kit, makes it a bit difficult to wind 35 turns on L1. If necessary you could overlap turns. But in my test build of the kit, I wound on only 27 turns and it worked fine, it was no problem to tune the crystal onto 10,140,050 or so.

4) Please remember to join the Knights QRSS email list http://cnts.be/mailman/listinfo/knightsqrss_cnts.be

5) Please remember to join the Yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QRPLabs/