QRP WAS Challenge

Small Wonder Labs SW+40

Well,  here I am blogging for the first time ever.  What brought me to this activity?  Well, I have accepted a QRP challenge from my good friend Brian KB9BVN to achieve WAS with very simple radios.  Brian is documenting this challenge via a blog and I thought I better do the same to have some ability to share my side of the story.  Brian is getting a Heathkit HW-8 at the Brownsburg hamfest tomorrow.  With that excitement he thought it would be fun to see who could get WAS with our simple radios first.  I will be using my trusty Small Wonder Labs SW+40 and he will use his new to him HW-8.

I have had my SW+40 for probably 10 years.  It was my first kit and it came to me by Brian's recommendation.  He supplied some external parts like jacks, switches, and other odds and ends.  I built the kit and have transplanted it into a different case since and tried to improve it over the years.  It has been thrown into desk drawers and forgotten for years at a time but I have a renewed interest in what I can do with a radio like this.  What can I learn from operating it daily?

I started in January this year with my MFJ 9040 and learned there are a lot of interesting people on 40 meters CW.  Tune slowly.  Listen carefully!  I have been successful at 5 watts, no gaps in the CW portion of the band, 500hz filtering.  The 9040 is larger and at 5 watts kind of power hungry.  I want to see if I can be as successful with even less.  I'm now at 1.5 watts, about 10kh gap in the digital band, and 600hz bandwith filter, and no AGC.  The one luxury I do have is a freqmite frequency counter.  It is much more accurate to know where I am in the band.  I'm 7 days in and I have made a QSO every day so far.

So, I am sure we will talk a lot about features and ability of our radios.  It will be very interesting how it works out and if we can stick with our radios of choice.