Gangue,
All but one of my tuna
can creations are currently 'active' on my website. My only
discontinued kit was a funky development kit for the Picaxe
micro. It will be returning in an updated format soon...
I also was the circuit board and case designer for the GQRP
kits. They are nice to build, look at and operate BUT I am
still partial to my tuna can designs for the following reason:
over several iterations, I upgraded most of my main line tuna
kits to get the most bang for the buck by incorporating band
module boards. Kits like the SUPER Tuna, Topper and Sudden
Storm can have the band modules quickly swapped and operation
completely changed from band to band in under a minute. The
GQRP transmitter and receiver kits are mono band. Want to
operate on 30m instead of 40m, build a couple more kits. You
can change the SUPER Tuna transmitter from 40m to 30m in under
a minute with a $10 band module. AS for the Topper 5watt
amplifier and Sudden Storm receiver, they can be changed in
the same time frame for a little more money. I only sell the
band module upgrades for those kits as a 80,30,20m combo for
$30 per kit. So for the price of the basic tuna can kit +$30,
it becomes a 4 bander!
Another current kit,
the WWVR receiver, is a bit of a sleeper. As I titled that as
a hook to its unveiling at the Duke City Hamfest where the
Chief Engineer was the keynote speaker. It was used as the
featured kit during the Buildathon so 10MHz WWV was my prime
target and first band module. There is a 40m band module and a
5Mhz mod in the documentation. So the WWVR is also a multiband
receiver but with one important addition, a real live varactor
diode in the tuning circuit (instead of power diode in the
Sudden Storm) for wider tuning. I could have (maybe should
have) called it the Sudden Storm /// (do you see the
relevance?).
So MY personal lineup
for a all tuna can station would be:
SUPER Tuna ][+ kit for
the transmitter
WWVR kit for the
receiver
Tuna Topper kit for
upgrading to 5watts (and providing automatic T/R switching)
Tuna Power Station for
gel cell charging and power distribution
Tuna RF Monitor kit
for the FUN of it (and being able to measure output power)
Tuna Tunah for antenna
tuning
All kits come either
stock for 40m or a simple mod as in the WWVR receiver
Add band module packs for multi-band operation as time and $$$
allow.
I do offer a 40m
TunaPalooza and SUPER TunaPalooza package at a discount and
have just changed the package and pricing to match my current
picks. Links to the packages:
I hope this clarifies
the situation.
Rex?? W1REX
