As the person who write the QST review, I can confirm I have an original QMX from the first lot at Hamvention. I was not involved with the labs testing and have no idea on which one they were using. I do know it took them a while to test as I submitted my review around the time of Hamcation.?
I stand by the review and love the QMX. I appreciate the additional firmware upgrades and wish I could have updated the review. The QMX is a fantastic kit and it is my goto POTA radio.?
It was a nice review, no problem with the review text; I think the lab might have got a couple of things wrong, but these things?happen. And there's always features or planned features which weren't mentioned, which one might argue should have been, but these are minor details and anyway when a radio like QMX is software-defined, with a lot of development still going on and some delay from review submission until publication, I think these things are normal.??
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that said I¡¯m working on the QMX+ review right now. Spoiler alert: another fantastic kit, but I do wish the form factor was a little different. It hasn¡¯t replaced the QMX as my main POTA?rig, even with the additional bands, mainly because it¡¯s just slightly too big to travel with.?
Form factor is *supposed* to be a bit different! One for the road, one for the lab. QMX+ with double the number of bands and a few other extras; and easier to build, space to modify etc (witness the recent pile of battery/ATU project participants!).??
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Im not sure it¡¯s the op amps or maybe I¡¯m just always using it my home antenna, but I do seem to get slightly better performance out of it compared to the QMX. Regardless, fun builds and great radios!
The LT6231 is now used in QMX as well as QMX+, I forget which PCB revision it started in. Wasn't in the first. So that makes some difference; also the QMX+ has in some bands better performance due to the fact that in QMX+ each BPF toroid is only single-tapped; one BPF toroid is shared between two bands; whereas on QMX you have one T50-2 for all the bands. So this makes a small difference too.?