QCX CW

 YO3HEX, Dexter gave me a nice present! 

A QCX CW pocket transceiver. 

It is able to put around 4-5W into one band and it is working only CW.

It was an awesome project for an afternoon and, after some 4-5 hours, the radio was ready, tested, the fine tuning made and on the second day I already made two CW contacts!

Here are some pictures from my work:

An eagel eye will notice the OpAmp misplaced (the right-side one).

One ferrite toroid snaps. Broke in three parts. Fortunately, I got a lot o this Type 2 toroids. Unfortunately, they are at my second lab, too far away for a lazy ham like me...

This is why I used ol' SuperGlue..

The project is completed. The OpAmp, still upside down.

 

Powered the TRX, current surged to around 1.5 Amps. Fortunately, I start all my experiments on my special design lab power source so no irreversible damage occured.

I found the fault pretty easy, the area was warm. I took out the OpAmp, put instead a 2x4 socket to check if the original circuit survived. 

I took the time to change the LCD with a Yellow-Green one and the original contrast trimpot with a 10KOhm one for a better range of contrast.

After I put the circuit on the right position, there was no damage so I took out the socket and placed the OpAmp directly on the PCB.

The broken toroid is doing well after SuperGlue surgery! 4W at 12V, this is nice.

Thanks to Mihai, YO3ISL, the radio got a nice case!