BITX-40 Unboxing by K7AGE

“My BITX-40 40 meter SSB QRP transceiver kit has arrived from India. This kit isells for $59 including shipping. My kit took 17 days to arrive from India. In this video, I unbox the BITX and show you all of the bits and pieces.”

The Raduino The new BITX40’s Raduino is an Arduino Nano powered, small, hackable board based on the rock steady Si5351 synthesizer with a clean 16×2 frequency display, free and open source code, 6 analog ports, three oscillators and six digital lines.

Receiver The listen to the very clean, crisp and quite receiver. The front-end has a triple tuned circuit that cuts out-of-band signals. The diode ring mixer front-end makes this a crisp receiver that doesn’t overload easily. The all analog signal path to your ear provides outstanding signal clarity that is to be heard to be believed.

Transmitter 7 watts of low distortion SSB provides you with enough juice to have thousands of contacts on 40 meters, daily rag chew and occasional DX chasing. Any common 2 ampere 12 linear volts supply will provide enough juice for this transceiver. Or you could simply run it from a battery!

Hackable

The BITX40 will inspire you to experiment. Modify it, mount it, tweak it, change it.

Raduino is a standard Arduino Nano that makes it easy to write code in simple C language to work on more modes, bands, utlilities. RIT, dual VFOs, more bands, CW/RTTY are just some code away! who will be the first to the Raduino keyer?

The main board uses all analog large sized SMD components that are laid out on an easy to understand manner on a double sided board with broad tracks. This can be your main module around which you can start experimenting. There are jump-points from where you can add more modules like the DDS, more bands, better audio amplifier, etc. Imagination is your limit. You can separately increase the power amplifier’s supply voltage to 25 volts to be more than 20 watts of power : You will have to add a better heat sink. The mods are on the way!

The boards can be installed inside any box that you like. Make your own station rigs, man-packs, SOTA rigs, trail radio or mount it in a cigar box and leave it on your bedside table. Watch the instructions video.

Box Contents

We have tried to include connector/hardware you might possibly need to build a full radio. However, we also had to balance the shipping weight to keep the overall cost down. You will have to supply your own box, power supply and earphones/headphones/speaker.

4-1/2 inches by 5 inches tested SSB transceiver module, covering any 400 KHz segment of the 7 MHz band
The Raduino board with Si5351, Arduino Nano. Fully tested
High quality BNC connector for the antenna
Small electret microphone
Two earphone style audio jacks for the mic and the earphones/speaker
A set of DC power socket and plug
Volume control with on/off switch
10k linear pot for tuning
8 Brass stand-offs with mounting nuts and bolts
Connectors with wires for all connections on the board

Over-the-Horizon Radars, Fishery and Taxi Traffic, Buoys, and Broadcasters Continue to Mar Ham Bands

May 11, 2016 in: News No comments

The International Amateur Radio Union Region 1 Monitoring System (IARUMS) April newsletter chronicles a plethora of intruding signals heard on exclusive Amateur Radio allocations in Europe and Africa, many of these also affecting the bands... Read more