OBSERVATIONS FROM SCOTLAND                            23  Aug 2007                                GM1SXX

The MKARS80 80M QRP SSB Transceiver. (Part3)

Building the MKARS80 has been one of the most fun projects I've ever worked on.  It was made particularly enjoyable  thanks to the very good documentation provided on the MKAR80 website.

My positive experience with this kit seems to be entirely normal for users, in sharp contrast to some other kits I've built.  Personally, I put all of this down to the superb instructions.   I'm a fairly experienced kit builder so I skipped quite a lot of the excellent manual, but it's there for you, should you need it.  I rate that as very important.  If you are confused, you need help... not waffle!  The MKARS80 was a model of a good manual... not a model of muddle, as I've found with some other kits.

My pet hate, like many other builders is winding toroids and pig-nose cores.  The BIG difference with this kit, is that the instructions were very detailed, and yes I DID take heed of them, and as a result, my radio worked first time.  I'm not sure why I hate doing toroids so much. They are NOT difficult to do. Each pass through a ring core or loop through the two holes of a pig-nose core constitutes a single turn... easy.  In part, it's just the fiddly nature of these small cores that bugs me, but doing the 2802 size pig-nose cores was actually really easy.  The manual was very good in instructing the builder how to identify and dress the leads for the various cores, something that I believe contributes heavily to the number of successful builds.  For myself, I like to do these cores with a darning-needle to pull the wire through. I learned that old QRP'ers trick from LA2QAA, the font of all knowledge in such things.

I'm sure that the very high quality double-sided plated-through circuit board with it's solder resist overlay and printed component positions also contributes heavily to producing so many radios that work first time. 

Yahoo hosts an MKARS80 group of which I'm a recent member. More at Yahoo MKARS80 Group

MKARS80 Homepage

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/mkars/MKARS80.htm

Much though I've pleaded for a 20M variant of this radio, it's not likely to happen. I hear that Steve G6ALU has other plans.

73 Al.
GM1SXX