So you want to be a builder? My name is Doug Hendricks, and I have been a ham
since 1976, and an avid qrper for most of my ham career. In 1993, the late
Jim Cates, WA6GER and I started the NorCal QRP Club. The purpose of starting
the club was to find 10 or 15 like minded hams who would be interested in
getting together to talk about qrp operating and also to help each other with
building our own gear. Were we successful? I would say so, as we stopped
counting NorCal members when we got to over 3000, from every state and 60+
foreign countries. NorCal's main purpose was and always will be to promote
QRP. We had a very successful journal for 10 years, QRPp, but we stopped
doing that in 2003 when it became too much for me to handle. There are 3
things that have remained constant for the club over the years, and are still
being done: Club kits, monthly meetings at the California Burger, and hosting
of the QRP Forum at Pacificon every October.
My favorite part of the club has always been the club kits, because I have
always had a desire to build electronic equipment. When I was a boy, I remember
reading Boy's Life magazine in the school library. My favorite articles
were always the ones about Ham Radio. I dreamed of being able to build my own
radio someday, to be able to talk to the world!!
I am not an electronics engineer, nor do I profess to be an expert on
electronics. But I am an average guy, with average ability to build. I
have built a complete SSB station, as well as a complete CW station. And
when I say complete station, I mean every piece. I even built my own microphone
for one of my SSB homebrew rigs. I have built keyers, paddles, keys,
transmitters, speakers, receivers, antennas, antenna tuners, watt meters, etc.
I take great pride in being able to say that the station here is 100% homebrew.
It always gets a response like, "Even the microphone and the paddles?"
This article will appear as a series, and it will take you from being a
complete novice, having never built a kit, all the way to building a
multiband rig. I will be recommending projects that are easy and fun to
build, and will go from projects that include complete kits to ones that are
just a schematic and a parts list. You don't have to build every project in
the list, and you may substitute others as you wish, but I do recommend that
you build the ones on the list, as I know that they are somewhat sequential in
difficulty. We will start with easy projects, and graduate to harder ones as
we develop skills. These articles will be posted on the NorCal QRP Club web
site, www.norcalqrp.org. I will be recommending club and commercial kits.
Please don't think that I am the ultimate authority on this. It is just my
opinion and something that I want to share with others.
This series will cover 4 main construction techniques: through hole, surface
mount, manhattan pad, and dremel/bit pad. Our first 2 kits will cover through
hole and surface mount construction. They are very inexpensive, and they are
easily available from the NorCal QRP Club. One is a kit that has been around
for years, and the other is a brand new kit. We will build the VE3DNL through
hole marker generator kit, and the Surface Mount QRP Dummy Load. The best
thing about these 2 kits is that they are available with all parts included,
they have solder masked, silkscreened circuit boards, and the cost is only
$7.50 each!! If you want to get started, go to www.norcalqrp.org and click
on the the "So You Want to be a QRP Builder" Button. The first article in
the series is called "So You Want to be a Builder, 2006, Part 1"
So You Want to be a Builder, 2006, Part 1
So You Want to be a Builder, 2006, Part 2
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