so i've been wanting to do this for probably two years now and i finally just did it. built a little pixie kit, yeah i know i know the pixie gets a lot of hate but as a first build it was actually really satisfying. took me a couple evenings to put together and i only had to reflow like three joints when i was done. got it working on 40m.

anyway i took it out to the park last saturday with a random wire antenna just thrown up in a tree and a 3ah lipo i had from an rc project. honestly wasnt expecting much, maybe nothing. but i worked a guy in ohio from here in pennsylvania on 2 watts and i swear i almost fell off the bench. he gave me a 559 which i'll take all day long. there's something about making a contact with something you literally built yourself that just hits different than turning on the icom and working europe.

now i'm looking at building something a bit more capable, been reading about the ubitx and also looking at some of the QCX stuff from QRP labs. curious if anyone here has done the QCX+ or the QCX mini and what they thought about the receive quality because that seems to be where the pixie really falls apart — the rx is just not great.

the QCX mini is really solid for what it is. i built the 40m version last winter and the receiver genuinely surprised me. it's a single band CW only rig obviously so if you're doing phone that's a non starter, but for CW portable ops it punches way above its price point. the DSP filtering is nice and tight, helps a lot when there's QRM. battery life is excellent too since it sips current on rx.

the ubitx is a different animal — more capable, more modes, but also more things that can go wrong and the stock firmware has had some quirks over the years depending on which version you get. lots of people run the improved community firmwares now which help. if you want to just get on the air with something reliable and you're good with CW i'd honestly say do the QCX first and then maybe tackle the ubitx later when you have more bench time under your belt. that ohio contact on 2 watts is the real deal by the way, dont let anyone tell you QRP isnt worth it.

yeah i did the QCX+ last year and it was my first real kit build and i was nervous but it went together fine. the manual is incredibly detailed, Hans really put a lot of work into it. only issue i had was i socketed the processor chip and had a loose fit which caused some weirdness until i figured out what was happening. once that was sorted it's been rock solid. took it to a state park for a POTA activation and made 12 contacts including one in canada which i was not expecting at all running 5 watts into a linked dipole.