N5ESE's Version of Norcal SMK-1 Kit

(More pictures follow the narrative)

At our May 2000 Austin QRP Club meeting, John Fisher K5JHF was kind enough to take pictures of my recently completed Norcal SMK-1 Kit. I thought I would post them here, along with two postings I made to the QRP-L maillist.

Also included are my own pix of the SMK-1 installed in the NJQRP enclosure kit, made from printed circuit board and soldered into a rather nicely fitting enclosure. I coated mine with clear acrylic paint inside, and painted it Krylon flat black outside. The keyer connector shown is not stock as supplied by NJQRP, because I wanted an RCA connector at that position. I also fashioned my own front and rear panel appliques. To do this, I printed on sticky-back paper using my trusty ink-jet printer, then covered it with self-adhesive laminating film (both available from any office-supply house).

Those with sharp eyes will notice that one of the SOT-23 transistors was replaced (rather crudely) with a TO-92 package. I did this erroneously, while troubleshooting a mute-circuit problem I had after assembly. You can read about it in the QRP-L posts below.

Performance? Well, considering that this was intended as a "training project" for surface-mount techniques, the performance is not too bad. The output is clean, keying a tad clicky (but tolerable), and no noticeable chirp. The direct-conversion receiver is adequate to the task, given a reasonable antenna. 1/4-watt output is always going to present a challenge, but I've managed at least one QSO every night I've tried to put this on-the-air. By the way, my best "DX" to date (5-16-00) is Ken N4SO in Mobile, Alabama at 577 miles. I was running on a worn 9V battery (8.5V) which gave me 130mW out... thats 4000+ miles/watt. It wasn't a pretty QSO, but we were able to exchange QTH and name. Thanks for visiting!

Pictures and Postings:

73,
Monty N5ESE
dit dididit dit

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