so ive been wanting to do this for probably two years now and last weekend i finally just did it. built a bitx40 from scratch (well sort of, the kit makes it pretty approachable) and took it out to the state park about 20 minutes from my house with a end-fed halfwave and a little tripod mast thing i cobbled together from electrical conduit.

ran about 7 watts into the antenna, which isnt exactly QRP by the strict definition i guess but close enough. made 6 contacts in about 2.5 hours including one guy in kansas which blew my mind a little because im in virginia and the conditions werent even that great according to the DX cluster when i got home.

the whole setup fit in a backpack and ran off a 3ah lipo i had from an old RC car project. honestly the efficiency thing is kind of addictive once you get into it — like i keep thinking about how i squeezed that kansas contact out of 7 watts and a wire in a tree and it feels way more satisfying than just cranking up power on my base station.

anyway wondering if anyone else here does a lot of SOTA or POTA type stuff with homebrewed rigs? curious what you guys are running for antennas when you go portable, especially if you're trying to keep weight down.

man that kansas contact on 7w from a park with a wire is a great feeling, i remember my first time being genuinely surprised propagation actually works the way the books say it does lol. ive been doing POTA pretty regularly for about three years now and honestly the antenna is where i obsess the most too. i went through a bunch of different wire setups and eventually landed on a 40/20m linked dipole that i can deploy in like 10 minutes. total weight with the feedline is maybe 200 grams, which sounds ridiculous but you appreciate it on mile four of a hike.

for the rig itself i run an elecraft kx2 now which is cheating a bit because it's so polished, but before that i was using a homebrew pixie and a sw-3b kit and honestly the sw-3b was a better experience than i expected for cw. if you're itching to keep building stuff have you looked at the 4state qrp group kits? some of them are really well documented and they have a pretty active community that'll help if you get stuck.

the RC car lipo repurpose is genius, im stealing that idea. i've been stressing about battery options for my setup and never thought about that. what connector did you end up using to hook it up to the rig?