so i've been licensed for about 3 years and always just ran 100w from the shack, never really thought much about QRP because honestly it seemed like making things harder for no reason. but my buddy kept bugging me about it and i borrowed his elecraft kx2 for a weekend trip up to the mountains and... yeah okay i get it now.

made contacts on 20m with 5 watts and a wire i threw up in a tree and it just felt different somehow, like more satisfying? hard to explain. the radio itself is tiny, fits in my jacket pocket basically, and the battery lasted forever. i was running it off a small lipo pack he had rigged up.

now im seriously thinking about either building something or buying a dedicated QRP rig. ive been looking at the xiegu g90 but thats not really QRP i guess, and then theres the mcHF kit and some others. anyone built one of those QCX rigs from QRP labs? they look interesting but im not sure if my soldering is up to it. been a while since ive done any kit building.

the QCX+ is honestly one of the best kit builds ive done and im not even that great at soldering. hans summers designs them really well and the instructions are super detailed with photos for every step. only tricky part is the toroids, winding those little coils is a bit fiddly but nothing crazy. the radio performs way better than you'd expect for the price, i regularly work europe from the midwest on 40m with 5w CW.

only thing is its CW only which some people dont like, but if youre interested in learning morse or already know it the QCX is hard to beat. if you want SSB there's the uSDX or the QDX for digital modes. QRP labs stuff in general is pretty solid. just take your time with the build, check your work as you go, and you'll be fine.

yeah that feeling you described is exactly it, i tried to explain it to my wife and she just looked at me like i was crazy lol. theres something about the limitation that makes every contact feel like you actually earned it. i've been doing SOTA activations with a tiny rig i half-built myself (its a mess inside but it works) and even just a few contacts from a summit on 5w is more fun than a whole contest weekend at home with a kilowatt.

dont overlook just building a simple single band CW rig if youre into kit stuff at all, there are some really basic designs out there that are great for learning. the 4state QRP group has some good ones. anyway welcome to the rabbit hole, its expensive in a different way than normal ham radio lol