I haven't assembled my v4 kit I received a few weeks ago yet, but have been reading and planning for an upcoming build and am really excited.? I was hesitant at first about ordering the kit as I recognized it wouldn't be the same as going out and buying a FT-817 or something similar, but the passion and activity around this project brought me in.? I'm guessing I will have a working radio at the end of assembly if I do everything right and it might put out some power everywhere, might have decent audio, but overall that isn't the goal for me.? The goal for me is to understand more about radio and eventually customize the uBitx into the radio I want to use.? I haven't seen excitement around building a piece of electronics since the late 90's early 2000's when I jumped in to the guitar tube amp building community and started out not really understanding anything and ended up being reasonably competent at building, repairing, and even designing some amps over time.? I hope to understand the radio side of the uBitx through experimenting with my build and this discussion group and hope to hack a little with the Arduino side as I have a little experience there as well.? It is really an elegant design and I kind of like the simplicity of using mostly the same transistor throughout the circuit in rf and audio.
BTW, I have a FT-817 as well and it doesn't work out of the box either.? You might turn it on and hit a local repeater on 2 or 440 with the stock antenna, but to work HF you have to figure out antennas, tuners, power supplies, interface cabling for digital modes, etc.? I have had a blast with that used FT-817 as well and it cost way more than the uBitx even though I purchased it used.
