Top 10 QRP Rigs of the 1970's - 80"s
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 เม.ย. 2023
- You asked for it! Here is the birth of QRP and a whack at revealing the top 10 QRP Homebrew Projects and Commercial Radios that started it all. What is all the fuss about low power?
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I am a die hard QRPer since 1996. You had a tough job of picking the top 10. I have and use the TenTec PM3A, HW-7, HW-8 and INDEX LABS in weekly rotation but my favorite is the Heathkit HW-9 with the WARC bands option.
Sam AE4GX
The HW-9 is just a touch late to make my list. That is a great radio.
I remember how much fun it was getting my first Tuna Tin 2 working. I need to dig that thing out and see if it still works.
It could be rolling around under the bench!
The Ameco AC1 kit was my first Novice transmitter in 1964. Cost was $19.95. (A Christmas gift from my dad). My first contact was on 7.19 MHz. I still know the schematic by heart, and have a 2.5 MH rfc from it in my collection. Now if I could just find the rest of it. 73 de KC4QI. By the way, I am still building, and QRPing on homebrew rigs. My Dad, KB4DFC (SK) used the Ten Tec 509 on 10 meters and made 100s of contacts around the world.
Man 10M is starting to act like the old days of great sunspots!
My first rig was a Century 21. Worked Australia from Glendale California on about 60 watts. About means it's almost impossible to get the rated 70 watts out of a Century 21. The power supply has a current limited that shuts everything down when the current reaches that magic 70 watt point. You then have to cycle power off and back on to reset the limiter. Standerd operation for me was to creep up on the power let it trip rest and back the drive control down a little. So, I was always a little below the limit. The pluss was, you did not have to worry about destroying power transistors in the final PA. It was a great rig for a Novice.
Century 21 Lore! Hey but the meter had this zone you tuned for- right? Ha.
One of the most balanced and beautiful front panel
I owned both the FT-7m (20W) and the FT-7B (50 W) transceivers. Had a QSO with a USA station mobile on SSB on 20M with a Hustler RM-20 antenna. Brilliant radio. Loved it.
QRP. My dad built the Breadboard osclilator that they used in the 50's and 60's. A single 6L6 and doing 6W CW.
The "6L6 Crystal Cracker" breadboard was a very popular transmitter. And it worked beautifully.
My novice rig in 1964 was an Ameco AC-1. It was QRP before QRP was a thing. I used it in this year’s Novice Rig Roundup and had a blast. Nice video.
Thanks! I have a Heath HR-1680 receiver now for nostalgic CW ops.
I had one of those! The king of the Mosfets.
Great video, and lots of fond memories. I remember studying that PM1 very carefully in the ham magazines. The price was right! Thanks Mike! 73 Bill
Yeah and three switches to change bands. Wow that was an expedient design with compromises to limit cost all along the development (one afternoon whiteboard design?) process.
Thank you for mentioning - albeit briefly- the AM Mobile Rigs of the 1950's. This was a big, complicated and often expensive segment of ham radio at that time. It was FULL of small homebrew transmitters - so much so that there are about a dozen Mobile handbooks full of construction articles published by ARRL, CQ, and 73 magazines. Low power because of expense of both the transmitter and the power supply, and the very low capacity of 6 volt cars ( 6v x 30 amps = 180 watts..if you raced the engine !) Factory made transmitters and reciever were quite expensive if they were in the 50 watt plus category. But there were many simplified low power (garage) factory made rigs like Lysco, Subraco, and others. Stancor, Gonset, Johnson, Morrow, and Heathkit made gear in both kit and ready made form. One of the classic ultra small 3 tube 5 watt AM transmitters used a carbon mic 6AQ5( 6V6) modulating a 6AQ5 (6V6) with a one tube crystal oscillator. This started as a homebrew design but then was manufactured by several companies..one of the most interesting of which is the Mars Thunderbird designed in the US but built in Japan. One of the very first Japanese imports for the ham market circa 1959-60.
The surge in the first generation of mobile came with the idea of everyone being able to afford a car after the war. The car converter and homebrew transmitter era is seen in the magazines and the ARRL Mobile manuals of the day must have been a real treat since the had great sunspots in the late 50s.
The guy that got me into amateur radio was a die-hard QRPer, who pointed out that with a kilowatt amp and tower mounted beam, you could work all continents in a single afternoon and what's the fun of that. A good friend had the Power MIte and we had great fun with that as teenagers. I later got an HW 8 that I still have and that I brought with me when I spent a year at Palmer Station Antarctica in 1980. Although the serious amateur work was done with Collins KWM2s, and kilowatt amp, it was fun to hook up the HW8 and work stations around the world. No doubt the beam antenna and KC4 call helped, but it was amazing what 2 watts could do. Fun times.
Ha that is great! We had point and shoot at our college station at RIT with the Drake twins and a Henry 2K and a beam 4 stories up on the engineering building!
@@MIKROWAVE1 Thanks, and both our stories confirm that a good antenna is far more important than raw power, which you can easily confirm by seeing how many stations you can work while running even a full kilowatt into a dummy load.
A very entertaining video, I knew of about half these rigs in VK. There was a series of articles by Harold Hepburn VK3AFQ in the Wireless Institute of Australia magazine, Amateur Radio, in the late 70s then reprised in the 1980s, on a modular solid state homebrew monoband SSB and CW transceiver. Full of dual gate MOSFETs and an 8MHz crystal filter. I built several of these with success. All QRP with 1 to 5 watt PAs. Not widely known outside of Australia but we'll respected at the time. Harold VK3AFQ was Australia 's W7ZOI! 73 Mike.
I work for an OZ company - CODAN. The Aussies were always great radio folks. Oh and I have a TAIT in the car so a wink to the Kiwis...
@@MIKROWAVE1 Codan is a much respected company here with a long history in radio. I looked at the website unfortunately it's all corporate content, no products. Guess that's not surprising, they don't make anything for hams or private users!
Another great presentation. Actually a brilliant presentation! I had completely overlooked the PW Severn - maybe I should build one 40 years later!
QRP works because; if a 100 watt transmission gives you an S9 signal, a 25 watt gives S8, a 6 watt gives you S7, etc. Anyone listening to the International Beacon Network can hear the relatively small difference between the 100W dash, 10 watt dash and the 1 watt dash - even the 100mW dash is often audible!
Unfortunately QRO is needed now to overcome local noise.
My carefully restored Heathkit HW-8 (2 watt output) has a noise limited sensitivity of 0.05 uV on all bands, although noise is at least equivalent to 5 to 10 uV on the lower bands!
dB or not dB! That is attenuation!
Awesome video!!! Thanks for taking the time to put this together, very enjoyable!
Thanks for watching!
Life's too short for QRO. 🇺🇲 I was inspired after reading W1FB's qrp design books, that guy is a legend. I still use them for reference. Thanks.
Shall I increase Power? QRO you pissweaker! Hee.
Excellent well put together video. Thanks for sharing and 73's!
Thanks for watching.
In the early days of QRSS (slow CW) I remember seeing my signals of a few mW on an American QRSS receiver all the way from NZ
Many thanks for the great review of these QRP rigs! You put a lot into this including working stations using some of these rigs! One of my treasured QRP rigs was made by Tokyo HyPower , the TH-750. It was a handheld styled rig that used 6 AA batteries. 6m/15m/40m SSB/CW with about 3 wts out. TenTec was always my favorite too, having owned the 509/515 and even the PM2 along with a ton of their other radios. I do own a QRO radio but it mostly sits collecting dust :) Txs & 73 WR4i
Now you are getting into some rare and less seen rigs from that era. Fabulous!
My first QRP (1973s) was single SL100 running 500 milliwatts (xtal controlled). Worked lots of VU2 and 4S7,8Q7 and MM stations on 40meters. Same rig changing 14mc Xtal used to work North Indian stations. Proud to get 1000 miles per watt certificate from ARCI contacting a VU2 station in the foot hills of Himalaya’s.
Without modulator, just connecting carbon mic made AM local contact !!!
Yes, I did enjoy that! Thankyou
I wish I had seen this video a while back. I had stated that QRP does not mean 5 watts, or any specific number, in a post on FB. I was soundly rebuked by the crowd of know it all hams who haven't been around for even 10 years. Us older Hams, who were there, know better and remember the controversy back in the early days of QRPARCI!
I enjoyed the video and seeing some of the rigs I used back in the day.
I still have quite a collection of small rigs, mostly single band, from group builds like NorCal, K1SWL, and others.
The tradition is being carried on with things like the QCX series of rigs.
This is QRP WAR! Hee.
Nice one! While watching this I couldn't help but think to myself "will the Yaesu FT-7 get a mention", so pleased to see that it did. My first radio as a VK novice was a Yaesu FT-7, I recall that it had a 1978 date code, as does the one I have in my collection now, some 40 years later!
The FT-7 was a great performer and very popular with the novice operators here in VK (late 70s, mid 80s), they are still somewhat sought-after even now, more as a collectors item though.
Just as an additional comment..
If I recall correctly the original FT-7 being the 10 Watt version was released around 1977, the later FT-7B being a 50 Watt version with greater 10 m coverage and AM mode added, was released around 1979. Personally I prefer the earlier 10 Watt version (closer to 15 watts), as it only draws about 3 Amps, and it's so easy to work on..
Thanks to Mike for his great work again.
There are those that have seen and worshiped them - and others who have no idea what you are talking about.
Yes, Chris, I had the FT7 10 watt (not the FT7B with the 50w). Mobile in my car worked over a hundred countries on SSB. (hard to concentrate on CW while driving though I did work a few CW stations by replying on SSB!!). Great video, thanks. 73 de g3sdy
Excellent video, as always, of an interesting topic, QRP operating rigs of the 70's. Living in an apartment I built a Heathkit HW-8. I ran coax our to my car in the parking lot to a Hy-gain mobile antenna. I worked a w4 station in Miami right off. I told him he was my first QRP contact with my HW-8. He said he would QSL. Now have a MFJ-9120 and MFJ-9120, QRP transceivers which are a lot of fun with the battery pack and turner. A great handy Yaesu FT-817, and a Elecraft KX3. I built an Elecraft K1 and used it for years with great success. The KX3 is amazing! Outstanding rx. Thanks for your outstanding videos. W5JCS
Wow but maybe the coax radiated better than the car!
I still have and use my Century 21 . Great vid!
The Century 21 looks like a 70's appliance inside. Lots of room for extra stuff!
Very nice review.
A few comments for someone who is just getting into this type of gear:
First, the HW-7 had a lot of receiver problems and is not a practical option. In fact, Heathkit themselves opted to create the HW-8, which was essentially the same transmitter section with an entirely new receiver section, as a replacement.
If you want a HW-7 purely as a display piece, that's fine, but don't expect to get a usable rig.
The HW-9 was a superhet receiver , as opposed to the direct conversion receivers in the 7 and 8, and included the WARC bands as an option.
The definitive work on mods for these rigs is "The HW-8 Handbook" by Michael Bryce, WB8VGE. The second edition is 2003, and is available on the internet as a download.
The Ten-Tec Century 21 has a maximum output of 70 watts because that is what Novices were authorized to use at that time. However, it is easy to turn it down to a few watts and it works very well.
Happy QRPing!
Agree and it takes all kinds of tricks to get the receiver operating hum free beyond just a good tuned antenna. But it does work after a fashion. Or at least that one I was given for the video worked enough. One note you have to almost zero beat the station you are working - or you walk up the band like an NCX3!
Thanks for the informative video, I've only owned one of your "Top10"; a very second-hand PM2A that had unfortunately been bodged by a previous owner and was quite old when I bought it in 1985. The receiver worked pretty well but the transmitter had a socket for the PA device, never did get it working...
You're quite right about the challenge of QRP Vs. QRO; my home rig is an old TS-140 that I usually keep wound back to 5W and I also like to operate portable with my 817, MTR3 or QCX.
At some point I want to have a go at building some of the old transmitter designs etc., and there's also the complete set of kits (Tx, Rx, VFO, T/R switching, casework and other bits) for a C.M.Howes 80m transceiver that I picked up for £10 last year!
73, G0CIQ
Socket in the PA spot - try and then buy?
Great video. Started my hobby with home brew qrp, and today 35 years later I just worked Sweden with 1 watt from New Zealand with a simple vertical antenna. Best wishes zl3xdj
CHUBRO on the pissweak signal.
My first novice station (in 1959) was a Johnson Viking Adventurer transmitter. 50 Watts 'input' which was about 25 to 30 watts output too a base-loaded vertical antenna. The receiver was a Philco superhet kit that covered 80 through 10 meters. My first intentionally QRP station was a 5 watt MOPA transmitter and a hope brew Superhet receiver. Both were home brewed from Doug Demaw plans back in the 90's. The Heathkit WW7 and HW8 were both good rigs. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. 73 de K7RMJ Frank. dit-dit.
All of us builders and dead buggers followed those grand masters and many others all around the world.
We started out with what is now considered QRP at one or less than 10 watts because the transmitters of the time (1920) were DC operated at battery voltages. Then we vaulted forward with line power and triode tubes of higher transconductance and longevity. Now, today we have power amplifiers that are transistor based, and the semiconductor receiver that is more sensitive and selective than ever before. So, now we can lower output power levels and still be heard over other stronger signals and noise levels. QRP flea power is still a challenge to us, but I have gotten +10 db signal reports worldwide with less than 10 watts CW and 15 watts SSB. Some days and nights brought no contacts at all QRP. Yet most times brought rewarding contacts with less than 5 watts on each mode. Propagation is the key. Lots are saying now "no shit, sherlock". But it is the power rich types I am typing this for. Low power transmitting solves so many interference problems, makes our hobby so much easier on our neighbors cheap electronics! I am not saying that we must not impinge on them at all, but I think we must have both capabilities of normal (1400+) and QRP at the same time. QRP for the challenges it brings to the shack, and full power when we absolutely need to pass messages in an emergency. I have alot of fun when I get a 5-9+ SSB or a 5-9-9 CW on 5 watts! This, I believe, is the new challenge to get us excited over worldwide DX with “fleapower“!
Those one tube oscillators and early MOPAS were and are a lot of fun. I have a 1 tube 01A Meissner oscillator that does about 250 mW out on 80M and it makes a flavorful tone.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I was lucky enough to have several of those radios
Hey, those radios were a handful of fun that worked on batteries from the drug store.
In the UK all Foundation licence holders are low powered operators and using current definitions QRP. We have much of the HF, VHF and UHF bands in all modes. I love QRP and even if I upgraded will still operate at maximum 10w SSB and 5w CW.
This is a great and it makes sense for a smaller footprint of harmful interference! Hee. Seriously I think it is a great idea and don't the Japanese have a similar approach?
I have seen a few QRP rigs that use the 2N3055 power transistor type.
👍Thanks Mike. What is QRP? I think some contests still class up to 100W as QRP😂.
I realise that you made reference to various rigs that were perhaps not popular in the US. However, one that sprang to mind was the Shimizu SS-105S. I think this was possibly the first small commercial multiband band dedicated QRP HF transciever I remember seeing in the 80s.
Very cool and would like to see more radios from that era!
I tuned an old 7 tube Heathkit CB base GW-12 to 29.025. The radio put out just one watt AM. I made a contact from Dayton Ohio to Saskateweun Canada. He gave me a 5-5. Later, I built a RF amp which gave me 10 watts and I made a contact to Houston Texas! So the term boat anchor only applies to those that don't want to put them on the air! KB8TPT
Wow a tube chickenbander on 10M AM! That is possible with the kind of sunspots we are starting to see again this cycle!
More please, Mike.
Loads of Tuna Tin 2N3866 CW QRP transmitter articles that I recall. Each one a single band, Xtal controlled. I seem to recall 1W Class C.
Yup and you can still get crystals cheap. Now that folks started ordering mass quantities and selling them in packs.
Well done, Mike :) I suspect that one of the drivers behind Japanese QRP operation might have been their famous(infamous) "no code" license that allowed voice operation on HF(40M), but w/ a power limit of 10W IIRC. An early descriptions of the HW7, in 73 IIRC, went something like; the perfect radio to take, along w/ some antenna wire and a couple of lantern batteries, and disappear into the brush for a week,,. DE WA1YKL
Yup the low power thing in Japan. Drove it. Should be back from road Thursday.
"§97.313 Transmitter power standards.
(a) An amateur station must use the minimum transmitter power necessary to carry out the desired
communications." Says it all.
Iloved this viido
Thanks for Watching!
I sent my log to a contest recently, where the lowest power category - 100W or less - was called "QRP", not "Low power." Apparently some confusion still exist even today.
I built and operated a Benton Harbor Lunch Box. Rockbound and limited, but at least I could afford it.
Great little radio that made all kinds of HISSING NOISE too. I had one on 2M with a modified TV antenna and Balun on a rotor. Worked out 35 MIles!
Love to see it i become full licensed hamradio in 1985 before that only VHF and UHF license, i struggle to get morse code for 2 years 1000 and 1000 sends of hour practicing every evening also sunday 1 hour listing to my teacher and his morse code 5 leter codes , i remembering after the end of the day but finally go the exam and becomes a full license but never could y CW after all the practices i think 5 hours every day also while driving seeing licence plate and do it morsecode but soon i hearers S or H i could not tell even with 2 or 3 dots , always reading what it could be and missing the next letter 😢
It is not hard - once you decide to get mad and get on with it. My neighbor who also got his novice at the same time at 14 was so maddening because he just learned it so fast and went by me like a shot.
I have a HW-8 tricked out with lots of mods courtesy of John KC9ON and easy to work on. BTW, K7SZ's moniker was "Rich" not Rick (yeah, I nit-pick) but Rich was a good friend of mine going way back to the early 80's when he and I were on active duty, Rick in the USAF and me in the USA stationed at nearby posts/bases; Rich's passing was a real loss to the community. 73 - Dino KLØS
The mods on these little rigs filled page after page of ham mags and even was found in some of the compendiums!
@@MIKROWAVE1 Yep, Mike WB8VGE (of the "Heathkit Shop" fame) has one of those covering the HW-X QRP rigs series. Thanks for another great historical compendium series Mike!
There was recently a big solar flare, and it is forecasted to cause auroras in northern new england. You know what that means. Also, you introduced me to the wide world of ham radio. I will not share my call sign here as I am a minor and it can be looked up to find sensitive details about me (i mean my address and things like that.)
73s Thomas
Stupid questions: when we see you transmitting Morse Code, we hear an audio tome, does that mean that the rig is sending an audio modulated signal? I see the circuits that you were showing (single transistor transmitters) and it looks to me like there is no audio mixing... so when those are used then is there simply a carrier wave and no audio mixed in? If so how does that sound at the reciever?
These radios all have a built in sidetone that is generated onbord and ported to the headphones or in my examples through a 600 ohm to 8 ohm transformer in the speaker box. The little homebrew transmitter used the external receiver to receive the signal as a sidetone.
No, to answer the question it doesn't send a tone. Just a continuous wave at the frequency in use. The receiver needs to add some "tone" so you can hear it, otherwise it is just telegraph clicks
@@mikekokomomike Thank you!!!!!
@@mikekokomomike So this makes me think (realize) that I could probably do something: I built a circuit quite a while ago using a Hartley one transistor oscillator that produced an 800kHz sine wave. I used it with a Gilbert Cell multiplier to create an AM signal, with an AM radio telescoping antenna, and was able to pick up the audio signal that I used as the modulating signal on an AM radio. Now I'm thinking that I could skip the modulation and just use the 800MHz sine wave, with the small antenna, and receive the 800MHz signal and maybe filter it out, run it through a "detector" (diode) and light up an LED when the signal is transmitted.
The 100-milliwatt contact was with a ham in your driveway.
Maybe but CT plates.
I still have my FT-7 but it some work it still receiver.
That rig was popular abroad because of several reasons like the 10W foundational licenses in the UK and Japan.
Mike do you own all these rigs or are some of them borrowed?
Great question! Except for the homebrew, all borrowed, and I was completely ignorant before touching them and doing research enough to be able to use them (and cable them).
How does one find the value of an Argo 509? I have a complete set that I no longer use and it's 5 out of 5
Plenty on Ebay. See how the sell. Take 30% off for a ham flea market
3:23 On screen "...Miles per Watt..." Given that RF power spreads out according to the Inverse Square law, this flawed metric favors tiny power over very very short distances. Even the mere mention of a mindless linear ratio of "Miles Per Watt" for what is an Inverse Square law relationship is conceptually and technically repulsive. If my math is correct, then if one could convince a signal generator set to -30 dBm to reach across your workbench (2m or about six feet) to a receiver, then you'd have beat the "1000 Miles per Watt" metric (1 microwatt and 5.28 feet = 1 watt and 5,280,000 feet or 1000 Miles). Then start dialing in -40dBm, -50dBm, -60dBm, how many orders of magnitude better can you go? If it helps (it will), then close the gap to a few inches, or a few mm, and try again; the math favors tiny tiny tiny distances. The unbeatable world record for "Miles per Watt" can be set by anyone with a signal generator, a sensitive receiver, two little loop antennas (perhaps close enough to constitute a transformer), and a tape measure (or micrometer when the distances shrink towards zero). All Hams should have noticed this conceptual error in the mere mention of "Miles per Watt". Cheers.
You are completely missing the point.
How about Miles Per dBm?😃
A bit USA centric, what about the Japaneses offerings? from Mizuho range or the Shimizu Denshi SS-105S? the FT7 was QRP but its a full featured rig otherwise. The Yaesu FT-75 would have been a better inclusion.
The Japanese market was QRP by force since they had power restrictions with licenses. This drove many manufacturers to get into the local game. We never saw all of these great rigs.
Life is not short; you were in kindergarten a long time ago.
Countdown is on!
Any advice on learning Morse code?
Listen to the W1AW broadcasts and watch some TH-cam.
Stop talking about learning Morse code and just do it.
What really burned me Burt was driving to the Deerfield Fair with my 11 year old kid 20 some years ago and we got stuck in traffic getting and he decides he wants to learn code. 20 minutes later he had it memorized.
Well, why would you want to use Qrp ??
It depends on your aim of course.
However, since any one can drop a bundle of money and buy a fancy piece of furniture or high powered rig one obvious reason is those that like to show themselves that they can become proficient enough to build their own and in the case of radio communicate by well constructed antennas & simple transceivers. It is a bit like one who ties their own shoes and another that for whatever reason has others tie the shoes for them.
QRP is a lot of fun. Especially retro QRP where you are building old time circuits or using vintage sets.
VU2USA my call.
Guilty of QRP-ing!
de SA3BOW
Guilty! And you must use a wet noodle antenna!
@@MIKROWAVE1 I confess myself to simple but longish wires end fed with DIY ladderlines. I have spend a lot of money on wire.
The rest of my "radio money" is more of... like wasted on plug and play moderna factory built stuff.. I'm a bad ham!
de SA3BOW