MKARS 80M QRP USB Transceiver

Following an article in Practical Wireless recently, thought it would be interesting to do a full QRP Transceiver project, so ordered a kit for the Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society "MKARS" 80 metre low power (QRP) transceiver.

This has been an interesting project to build, using 18 transistors, an audio amp chip, a couple for voltage regulators, and a PIC micro controller, in a compact design - giving around 6W or so of RF power.

Construction has taken a couple of weeks (quite a few quiet evenings in the attic - found I needed a cheap "pound shop" pair of reading glasses over the top of my ordinary glasses - as a kind of "preamplifier" to see the small resistors, trifilar transformers etc in good detail, but the whole thing has been great fun to assemble).

Jenny wound the various transformers, and tidied up the "metal bashing" that I did on the case to cut the window for the LCD display etc. Aligning and setting the frequency of the vfo etc was straightforward.

Had my first QSO using this transceiver (to a local ham in Cheltenham) on 3.690mhz on 19/6/09 -