Ben nice to meet you and so many other great folks here, and Hans is amazing. Your idea of the T1 method is a very nice one. I made my leads not 3cm but much longer, so as to be able to pull it high in the sky above the board to see where to poke the next one, then pulled them all tight bit by bit, not easy. And it took me two goes to get it right, so your method sounds like a nice option.
I have been having such fun with the QCX, building it and now operating it. It has come at a time where it is a bit of a life saver too, as I needed distraction from some really awful events occurring here. Building it has kept my mind off things, and using it is just WOW. The RX is much quieter than my big rigs in terms of local noise. It is such a pleasure, even with the varying volume with signal strength, it is much more pleasurable, local noise just doesn't seem to impact. I think the choice of direct conversion RX with fantastic rejection of other side band, is just fantastic.
I had no problems to work Timor and USA shortly after going on air, and then I left it on WSPR and got reports from all around Europe through the night. Now I just had more than an hour rag chew with 599 both ways to my good friend Tim VK3IM on 30m, even though our distance would often be too short for 30m. Solid copy for over an hour, and great fun. The features and performance of this little rig are clearly what would be found in something at least 10 times the price. The fact it also allows for lots of additional construction and modifications fun, while already performing so well just all mounted as is on the PCB, is another big plus.
The QSK on CW is wonderful. Really wonderful. Some more CW characters need to be added in a future firmware update, and I'll volunteer to give a full list when the time comes. It's also fun that there is still small additional things that can be added in future updates, e.g. allowing menu editing input to be done from straight key not only paddle. Built in straight key works just great. Tonight rag chew with the old post office bug, great fun.
I drove around to the shops and back with it on the back seat with a 12V battery and a squid pole poking up through the side window, bottom 3 thick sections, helical wound, and got WSPR reports from around VK even like that without the high dipole. I'm looking forward to using the QCX out and about and on future travels, just as I enjoyed using an HW-8 back in the 80's from around France, England, Sudan etc. The size of this is amazing.
I had indeed forgotten, not in theory but in practice, how fun QRP is, and how a couple of watts gets you out so well. Local noise is the big killer of amateur radio these days, even more than contests, robots, unlimited/unspecified splits, and the thing that prevents many contacts as you cannot work what you cannot hear: but the QCX makes listening a lot more pleasurable in a fairly high local noise level as I just did not notice the noise AT ALL on the QCX. That's got to be worth 20dB.
Indeed what a fine contribution to the Ham Radio community, to reviving construction, and for many like myself, giving a first real taste and enjoyment inducting us into the world of construction, and also what a fine contribution to the Morse Code Revolution, with a lovely built in key and a high performance CW rig with WSPR built in.
I think soon we will have thousands of fun signals all having fun with QCX, I know several ham friends around Australia already building QCX and we will soon no doubt have much fun QCX to QCX. I don't even resent the fact that it has no chirp nor drift being a great fan of both, can't praise this rig highly enough. Thanks to all involved in its design, to the wonderful people in Japan who are doing such a fantastic job to sort, package and dispatch it with such high quality.? Please QSP our thanks!
