Hi Ken, all
I have purchased three (3) QCX 5W CW transceivers. I let the Magic Smoke
out of one, am in the middle of building the second, and the third is
still in the
box.
I hope you are planning to repair it! Magic smoke can always be put back in
:-)
One thing I really like about the W8DIZ transceivers (like the 1-Watters)
that they can be built one section at at time, testing each section
before moving on to the next section. Whereas the QCX is a
populate-the-whole-board-then-turn-it-on kit.
The QCX could be built one section at a time, tested section by section
too. But that isn't the way I wrote the manual... some people prefer
populate-all, some people prefer test-a-section-at-a-time. In the end I
opted (rightly or wrongly) for the populate-all approach because there were
already a lot of parts and it seemed to offer the lowest probability of
mistakes and the most efficient approach.
I must say that the documentation for the QCX 5W CW TXRX is the BEST
documentation that I have ever seen for ANY kit that I have ever purchased
and built. The QCX documentation should be the template for kit
documentation for every kit manufacturer in the world (especially the
Chinese kit manufacturers). I have no idea how long it took G0UPL to put
that QCX documentation together, but the time was well spent. Literally
the
BEST kit documentation, ever! [>cheers< >applause<]
Thanks :-)
The manual actually took me 3 entire days to write. I remember it well.
That's not bad for a 142-page manual, but I'm a fast typist. Wish my CW was
so fast :-(
The other documentation (trouble-shooting page, trouble-shooting video, and
the article for the FDIM 2018 conference proceedings) also cover a lot of
detailed design information and these came later.
73 Hans G0UPL
