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Hello, Did anyone notice in an earlier message from Rex Harper, W1REX. This looks exciting: [Rex] will be hosting another Saturday Buildathon live streamed for the March QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo. The kit we will be building is a brand new updated version of the Sea Sprite transceiver operating on 7110. [Rex has] changed: - the output portion of the kit to a low pass filter - with built in antenna coupler. - [Rex] will be adding a half wave end fed Zepp antenna wire - and simple pcb key to the mix. So in a couple of hours, a brand new [Technician] ticket holder can be completely on the air on 40m. Yes, they will have to source a 12V battery and some headphones. I know the Sea Sprite rig is very simplistic and the performance is questionable but I have to start with a kit that can be built by practically anybody in a couple of hours. My hope is that any beginner builder could get an 'hf station' ready for on air operation in one session. Half of the workshop is aimed at getting beginners to build while the other half is the on the air action. I will be pushing for everyone to put their rigs on the air for a mini event on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Possible a couple of hundred exact same rigs & antennas on the same frequency operating at the same time. This is an neat opportunity to get a real handle on whether or not one can actually make contacts on such a rig. In a Sunday workshop on the QSO Today event, we will discuss the mini-event results and then talk about the parts of the little transceiver as to how they work and affect the performance thereof AND possible changes and improvements. Should be fun. More info as it develops.... Link to original message: /g/QRpmeKits/message/328

Hello hams or potential hams who want to build and play with QRP radios. The next time Rex Harper and others go to build-o-thon sessions at some conferences, can you start up a conversation on this group please? Blog about? Take notes, photos, and videos. And post the notes here as an attachment to a message. Upload videos to YouTube and link to the videos in a message on this group. Photos - well, you can attach in email, point to the file section but there is a limit there... Or upload the photo to flickr.com but I have never used them. And then put a link in the message to the photo on your flickr.com account. Make the photo visible to the public. Not sure if there is a limit or criteria on flickr.com For each build-o-thon, create a new topic and then everyone posts to that topic if they were part of that build-o-thon or they bought the kit and built it from home. Not only a build-o-thon conference but your own stuff your built recently. I know in the Richmond Amateur Radio Club has people who are put of a Radio Builders Group in Richmond, Virginia. So, see if your club is building anything or suggest to build something from QRPme.com - their kits are low cost, and simple to build and understand. So, show off those Two Tinned Tuna transmitters you built. And show off those Sudden Receivers. Include accessories and test tools RockMite IIs and amps and tuners. What contacts did you make? What antenna did you use? What bands did you chose? Did you have any issues? What did you do to fix the issues? What did any elmers suggest to you? Did you make any modifications or enhancements to your rigs? Inquiring minds would like to know... Thank you, Daniel Morgan, KK4MRN in South Carolina

I know it is just easier to own a Jackery and I have owned similar units a few generations older, I decided to build a low cost POTA portable power box that would power all of my QRP & QRPp radios with the prospect for it also to power a QRO rig is and when I ever own one again. Anyway, I had fun with this project and right now that is the only thing that counts, life is short and if you aren't having fun there is no reason to be on planet earth at this time. This isn't about Tuna directly, but you can count the number of times I say Two Tinned Tunas II in the video, LOL. Personal Review of Gigaparts Explorer Deluxe Battery Box Personal Review of Gigaparts Explorer Deluxe Battery Box Dave, AKA Operator Davey - KU9L

Hello, Should I get the Two Tinned Tunas (EZ Build) and the Tuna Tin 2 40th Anniversary Issue? Other than the obvious that one kit includes a tuna can where as the other does not. Are the designs the same? Anyways, I was thinking of getting another Two Tinned Tunas. My kits I built years ago got damaged or parts lost in my last move. Going forward, I will put my kits into an enclosure. At a minimum, keep it in a cheap plastic food container. But preferably in a metal enclosures. I found aluminum enclosures on Jameco for $9 that worked for me. I also came across a Kindle book called Oscilloscope Applications for the QRP Enthusiast and they use one of the original Tune Tin transmitter in the book. I was thinking I could use the kit from QRPme. Of course, the kit from QRPme was designed to meet today's FCC requirements where the harmonics must be 43dB down compared to 30dB prior to 2003. I was thinking of getting another Sudden Receiver for the same reasons where parts got damaged or lost. I was wanting to build a Direct Conversion Receiver thinking I never built one of these types of radios. Then I re-read the Sudden Receiver kit is based on the G3RJV Sudden Kit. Searching online more about this old kit, I discovered it is a Direct Conversion Receiver. Lately, I have been trying to learn more about radio electronics and its theory and math. These QRP radios are a good way to learn these things. You blow a transistor - no problem - replace it with another cheap transistor. Anyways, a big thanks to Rex and others for creating these kits. 73 Daniel KK4MRN

Has anyone done Mods to their Tuna Helper to alter it from charging a SLA battery to become a Voltage regulator (Out to the Tunas) for +12.6 -13.0 volts when the Can is powered by a LIFEPO4 lithium battery? I do not need to charge the LIFEPO4, I already have that function covered. My picnic table power supply is a Group 24 size battery box from Gigaparts, you can't put a full size group 24 battery in it and that would be too heavy to carry around, plus I am a QRPp guy. Instead of buying a $279 Bioenno battery (yeah they are really cool), I bought a couple 6 AH LIFEPO4 lithium batteries on AMAZON for $29 each that I put in parallel into my Explorer box. The box has ample Anderson Power Pole connectors for output and even a solar controller input, USB A & C outputs with a token voltmeter to tell me when I am out of amp-hours. This is a great setup for powering my 12 volt DC soldering iron, it will handle soldering 2-3 tuna can projects and still have power to spare. The problem though is the battery resting voltage is 13.3-13.6 volts (maybe okay for most QRP rigs, not my KD1JV rigs that like under 12.0 volts), but when I plug in my 100-watt solar panels I am pushing 14.4-14.6 volts in the battery absorption phase. I could easily smoke a Super Tuna+ Q3 final at that range and it only takes one time to forget to turn down the power output to release the magic soul of a transistor. My goal is to build or MOD a 12.6 volts voltage regulator circuit that will handle my entire ST+ station including any future Tuna Topper Amp, etc. Since my Tuner Power kit is currently in transit to me, I figured now was time to do some Imagineering. Albert, as explained below, might not agree with me, LOL! Backstory: I used to work as an electronic technician with a German Engineer in my formar aerospace career who used to pronounce everything with his German accent so my warped sense of humor tends to reflect those experiences. Albert would commonly tell me that the test stand setup wasn't working because "I was the one working on it." At least I knew where I stood, LOL. My QRP experiences started in 1980 when I needed to build quarterly lab projects at my community college of which I would breadboard little 40m QRP transmitters I saw in CQ magazine only to discover something vital was left off the schematic, in those days we didn't have google, but Professor Ruby did have a giant book of circuits that we would attempt to plug and play which was a lot of fun. I destroyed a lot of 2n2222a transistors in parallel because it was very hard to precisely match bias resistors and the concept of marched impedances between plug-in circuit stages was on a vague fleeting concept at the time. I remember having permanent 2n2222a tattoos on my thumb and index fingers while checking the temperatures of the transistor bodies while talking with the Elmer down the road. The transistor with all of the bias current would go first and so on, but it was fun chatting across the county with only a few milliwatts and my and Hammarlund HQ-145A receiver (miss that one dearly). Okay, that being said, as Rip Van Winkle wakes up from his 20 year lapse of fun in Ham Radio I noticed a lot of YT videos out there of folks experimenting with with some of the $12 chinese clone junk transceivers out there and it was fun (for a couple minutes) watching them blow their transistor finals with high VSWR (maybe only 2.5:1, etc) AND too high of a supply voltage. Now I got to thinking duh, the answer is obvious, but a lot of the low current voltage regulators are also RF noise havens. The ST+ II states 2 watts output potential at 12.6 volts. At 14.6 volts VCC that might be more of a smoke test. On the solder bench it is easy to turn down the supply voltage, but out at the picnic table it requires more thought. I feel inspired to breadboard something and if the Tuna Power does not want a big MOD, then I have a 2"H x 2 5/8" Lindsay sliced salad olive can that wants a project, LOL. Dave - KU9L

Okay, tongue in cheek and in the spirit of 100% fun I decided to demonstrate my inability to master AI voiceovers and struggled to find free web-based video creation software that was 100% compatible with my Acer Chromebook. However, both the soldering and the video were 100% fun and I again demonstrated my stupidity to follow instructions by intentionally installing the PN2222A with the silkscreen instead of against it like the special builder's note called for. I knew what to do and my fingers still did the opposite, not unlike what I had to do on hundreds of aerospace engineering prototypes over the years in which I got those wrong too. I think it started with Heathkit in the 1970s and got worse from there, LOL. If I violated any trademarks or Top Secret presidential document orders, I plead the fifth & beg forgiveness as I am not a political guy. If I said I was leftwing Libertarian it is because I don't know what that is and I don't want to be one of the other guys either, LOL. Cheers es 72, Dave - KU9L - I couldn't have done this without the love and support of KB9YYI who also thinks I am crazy and like no one else on the planet. QRPme Tuna Helper Assembly Review - Part I QRPme Tuna Helper Assembly Review - Part I

Rex, The 12 volt soldering iron looks real nice. I am looking forward to diving into the kits out on my silicone mat at my picnic table. At 5:30pm the winged vampires come out and the tools get packed up, quickly, lol. 72, Dave - KU9L On Sun, Jan 1, 2023 at 10:13 PM, Rex Harper <w1rex@...> wrote: Dave, Spent some time unstacking boxes and found what I was looking for! Got plenty of polyvaricons...as I spent an entire social security check buying many flavors of caps! Of course, the Super Tuna ][ has band module capability and the basic version comes with 40m parts. An 80/30/20 pack is also available so you can change bands in a only a few seconds! Sudden Storm kits are canned and on the shelf as are a slightly different Soup Up kit. Old pots were retired but I found some new ones. I also have a brand new 12V soldering iron of the variety I mentioned before. I have lots of irons in for use/sales at my Buildathons so I can part with it as a gift to you. Its nice to see your call sign back in TunaLand! Rex On 1/1/2023 9:09 PM, David Knapp via groups.io wrote: Rex, I watched your video, in fact, I did again early this morning to delay some other work I needed to help my father-in-law with. I was Class 3 Space Shuttle solder certified back in the 80s and post cataract surgery a few years back I can see better than when I was 40, lol. I ordered the butane iron, but I didn't have an XT-60 female connector and AMZ said the 12v iron was to be delayed until Feb 14 although the price was right. I saved it for later & ordered the female to the banana adapter, my POTA power box is a group 24 battery box with Power Pole connectors and a couple of banana jacks with 12 AH of LIFEPO4 batteries I installed. So the battery that will power my Tuna cans could also help build them & have a solar panel to extend the time even further. If you find the capacitors let us know, I would build a 20M & 40M Super Tuna 2 & would even consider doing a 30M version if I could get help finding the toroid coil/cap value, etc. If you have a Sudden Storm Kit or Rexwood 1000W RX kit in stock with the Soupup kit instead let me know. I still think doing a POTA activation with a complete TT2 station would be cool, I think one of the QRP sites out there has a 200Hz audio filter kit floating around. The beauty of some of these designs is they don't have to be perfect like a brand new rig out of Japan, they just have to be fun. Your other kits are fun too. I built several kits from K1SWL back in the 90s when I never got over Heath going out of business. Dave - KU9L On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 07:49:21 PM EST, Rex Harper <tunacankits@...> wrote: On 1/1/2023 4:23 PM, David Knapp via groups.io wrote: Have fun David & get out of IL down to where you feel like a tourist, but playing radios sure is fun and Thomas K4SWL gives tons of code practice on his YT channel just doing SOTA & POTA. Does Rex W1REX keep Tuna kits in stock ready to go or are they kitted one at a time when ordered? Rex, Do you sell any Tuna Super PaLooza's or 40m Tuna PaLooza kit's these days or do you concentrate on the current projects? 72, Dave - KU9L Dave, Most of my sales are for my home brew Manhattan bboards. I shot myself in the foot by making them a little smaller and a lot cheaper so my my sales income is down almost 50%! I try to keep tuna can kits stocked on my inventory shelf.... and sell a few here and there. Most of us 'old-timer' QRPers have already built them and moved on (not me!). I sell some to newbies and others who have lost their tuna 'stash' in some sort of cataclysmic event like an un-informed cleanout! That is why I don't let my wife anywhere near my QRPstuff. To her, a cord is a cord, and she hates anything electronical especially cords! I just checked and the only thing I'm missing are Super Tuna ][s due to no tuning caps. I have some laying about but just can't find them. The Supers are kitted but lacking the cap. Looks like I'd better put out a BOLO for them. You should check out my Tool Talk on my YouTube channel.... I really loved my Radio Shack Butane soldering iron an

Rex, The QRpme site has dropped the schematic for the Super Tune 10 Meter Band Module. Perhaps that data is already on one of the frequency charts, just looking for more data (as usual). I don't have the band module itself, but scoping future potential projects for it. This is the missing file location: http://qrpme.com/docs/SPT-10%20schematic.pdf TU es 72, Dave - KU9L

Rex, Kevin - KE9ZK has nominated a possible name for your Skoolie project of mobile office/camper/excursion vehicle: Tuna Trawler, or the Russian version Tuna Trauler, lol. Anyway, you never know when the Limerick naming contest will commence, lol. Cheers es 72, Dave - KU9L

When your daughter-in-law accidentally sells your QRPme kits on FB Marketplace, you.might be depressed, lol. I enjoy building the kits, although I am slow as can't take much with me in a 23' RV to FL. I was hoping to buy a used communications RX, but eBay prices are out of sight now. A Super Tin Tuna 2 does great as a novelty for a POTA activation, but I need a real RX with lots of selectivity & a real mute function to have an enjoyable experience. The Chinese SDR RX (ATS-25) got a bad rap for anything other than casual SWL stuff. Maybe at HamCation I will find something. I am going to start re-replicating my TT2 stuff at least, can't just run down to RadioShack anymore, but at least I have a stout picnic table on my RV patio. Cheers es 72, Dave - KU9L

Gangue, Just a fast update as I am heading to Vermont in a few minutes... The brand new double sided MeSquares arrived and will now be the Mainestay of my home brewer's Manhattan construction panels. In a nut shell, smaller panel size with BIG MeSquares on the top side and quad groupings of little MeSquares on the bottom side. So with 1 panel you get both size pads and at a 40% reduction in price! This also affects all the combo pack pricing and as a nice holiday bonus, I reduced the price on all the other panels to match! Special pricing on a few kits that are Mainestays in the QRP community. Tuna Tin 2 EZ Builds, Sea Sprites with the new low pass filter for max rf output are featured as are a couple of inexpensive stocking stuffer kits. Last but not least, my not-so-new Bola Tie kit. Check them all out at http://qrpme.com/ My wife and I always start the season out celebrating our all time best gift....out daughter. We are heading out to Vermont to celebrate her birthday on Dec. 7th. I hope you all have a Happy Holiday season too! Rex W1REX

Gangue, I just checked my mailing software and see that most everybody has their AT2 Buildathon kit. Of course, DX builders won't have them for at least another week. Canadian kits went to a friend, Erci Gunter, who gave me an American address. I sent the Canada orders to him and he will forward them to the Canadian builders. There are still undelivered kits to Canada from the QSO Expo Buildathon in early March as Canada Postal Customs apparently severely bogged down or on lockdown so Eric offered to get Canadian kits through. I've had many questions from individuals about parts, pictures, docs, other people building or finishing their kits etc. I just can't respond individually to each query and do justice to the group. Please sign up to my Groups.IO mail list and post questions, suggestions, help etc to the list so we can all benefit from the exchanges. Use the AT2 Buildathon: at the beginning of the subject line so we can all filter them to an email folder for easy collection. I had lots of QRPme orders backed up from when I was FULL TIME on the AT2 kits in the kitting & shipping effort. I had to take care of that business as best as possible before I could get back on this project. I got my AT2 bench 1/2 cleared off and hope to finish that chore later tonight. I will shoot another video or two late tonight and tomorrow morning and post them ASAP. The 1st one will be an overview of the AT2 project, what's what and how to proceed. All of you have waited an extraordinarily long time to get the kit so don't try to build it in one night. Lets take it slow and sure so everybody is on the same page. I'm not saying we all have to build it at the same time and speed. I just want everyone understand the pertinent information on the overall project before they jump into the building process. For instance Questions fielded: 1: Two standoffs instead of four on the Chinese HV brick on the power supply: Yes, opposite corners of the board work just fine. It's not going to go anywhere with two 6-32 bolts and nylon insert lock nuts. 2: Miniature tube socket but no tube: I always include extra FUN stuff with my QRPme kits. With the discovery of the Chinese HV brick, the high voltage power supply problem was solved. No back to back 'wall warts' were needed and no complicated and dangerous linear power supplies had to be built......but there are purists in every crowd. I spent a couple of months trying to solve the 'double wall wart back-asswards' cheapo HV power supply trick. Not only did I burn up several hundred dollars worth of wall warts, I also went through about $200 in back to back filament transformers too! I managed to get both approaches to work but the costs were astronomical. I started with engineering calculations and picked more QRP reasonable parts that would appear to have the nads to do the job. They all self destructed as I worked my up from QRP (budget) friendly parts to more QRO models. Both approaches work ONLY when you OVER spec'ed the parts by a ton. I ended up working with the TOP END of the performance specs which resulted in power supplies costing over $25 just in transformers. Back to back filament transformers worked a little better but not much. I ended up finding that Hammond Manufacturing still makes plate/filament transformers for the guitar amp rebuild market but they are in the $30+ price range. Hence the Chinese HV brick. They are cheap...but noisy. You may have to use a T/R switch to de-power the brick on receive depending upon your situation. I did add a spot on the power supply where you can hook up the output of a plate transformer and added the parts to make a decent CLEAN high voltage power supply if you want. The miniature socket if for and OA2 tube for voltage regulation if you want to go that route, but you have to supply the tube. You could also do a little rework on the pcb and crank up the Chinese HV brick and then have an OA2 tube to regulate it to 175 volts... BUT it is an AT2 (Acorn Tube 2) kit and not an AT2+1 kit. 3: Yes, two mounting holes for the crystal and the polyvaricon tuning ca

Hello, I have not seen my post go through that I entered a few days ago. Since the last message I see on this group is in June, maybe there are messages from others in a moderator queue as well. 73 Daniel KK4MRN

Hello Rex, What's the latest update on the kit? When can we expect to receive it? Tnx. On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 4:09 PM Rex Harper <tunacankits@...> wrote: Gangue, I really wanted to finish the FDIM Buildathon kit well in advance of my drop dead date but that was not to be this year. March was a VERY busy month that compounded the typical workload that always comes up in April so I was working 20 hours a day 7 days a week all through April. I had several false starts with prototyping the Buildathon kit and when the 2 TTL chips actually did work, it was way TOO EASY! I built one on my Pocket Electronics Lab solder-less breadboards that fit inside a mint tin. It took me about 15 minutes and I was working hard to make it beautiful.... So I needed a little more oomph. I decided to throw in a Picaxe micro to the mix but seems like my Picaxe stock was low. While rooting around the web for Picaxe micros, I saw that they had eliminated the 14M2 and added its unique features to the 18M2. I didn't have any of those either but ordered some and included it in the design of the pcb. At the very last minute, I literally tripped over an obscure TTL submission in SPRAT that showed it in a transceiver configuration. Since I was still underway with the pcb layout, I just expanded the pcb from a 'regular' tuna board to a 'family' sized board to get the extra real estate. I knew we were only going to build the transmitter portion in the Buildathon but the extra stuff would be extra FUN for extended home work.... I try to advance the tuna legacy with each new design and I wanted to add the micro to make the first kit in my portfolio that didn't require a Morse code key to operate. I worked crazy hours to get the design done and then paid an extra premium to get them fabbed in 1 day! I still had the very uncertain shipping time from China so I had them shipped directly to the FDIM hotel. I never got to see the pcbs until I landed at the FDIM hotel late Wednesday night. I built up the first unit over Thursday and Friday, kitted up the parts and was ready to build by 3:00 on Friday. For years, we have started the Buildathon at 4pm on Friday with a pizza party around 4:45 or so to give people some time at the Hamvention before they had to leave and head for the hotel and the FDIM Buildathon. So I was sitting in my room at around 3:30 (or so) when there was a knock. I found Eric, KC2TXO, standing in the hall wondering where the head wrangler was for the Buildathon . Ther were a roomful of Builders that had been waiting for me to show up since 3pm! DAMN! a misprint in the FDIM schedule show the Buildathon starting at 3. News to me! So we grabbed all the stuff and took off. There were 15 builders in attendance with 1 builder having to leave early due to his buddies having to be elswhere before he was finished. Out of 14 remaining builders, 13 were tested, fixed and declared GOOD! The last builder had a problem that we just couldn't diagnose. He changed several parts but we just couldn't get it to key. He went home with another kit to try a second build... Since I could only find 9 micros, the programming was incomplete and we only tested the builds using the direct keying from MK to MK which bypasses the micro altogether. The GOOD: As sold in the Buildathon buildup, the simple TTL 2-Chip Transmitter worked. The switched parallel output buffers indeed worked and created 4 distinct output power levels. There was a bypass capacitor between the 2 TTL chips that wouldn't fit between the 2 sockets but the problem was easily fixed by mounting the cap on the underside of the board and soldering the pins on the top layer before the sockets were installed. The MK-MK jumper worked as anticipated so the keying transistor circuit worked as desired. No power measurements were made but you could hear the distinct power levels on a nearby hand held receiver. The circuitry on board that made up the transmitter and control inputs to the non-existent micro-controller were just about right time-wise for the Buildathon. The BAD: I was going to come home and hop on the p