so i've been lurking on this forum for about a year now and kept seeing people talk about qrp and honestly i thought it was kind of a gimmick at first, like why would you limit yourself to 5 watts when you could just run 100. but i got bit by the bug after watching some youtube videos of guys making contacts from mountain tops with a radio they built themselves, and i finally decided to just go for it.

i built a youkits HB-1B clone kit from a guy on qrz — took me about 3 evenings spread over two weeks, mostly because i kept second guessing my solder joints and had to reflow a few of the smd caps. but it fired right up on the bench, which honestly shocked me. got about 4 watts out on 40m which i'm pretty happy with.

took it out saturday to a park about 20 minutes from my house. just threw an end fed half wave up in a tree, brought my little kx2 paddle and a notepad, and just started calling cq. i was not expecting much but i worked 6 stations in about 2 hours, one of them was in Ontario which felt like a big deal to me. the whole setup including my little lipo battery weighed maybe 2 pounds. i dont think i can ever go back to sitting in the shack the same way again honestly.

anyone else been doing sota or pota stuff with home built rigs? curious what antennas people are using for portable. i feel like the antenna makes such a huge difference at qrp levels.

congrats on the build, that's always a great feeling when it just works the first time. and yeah you're 100% right about the antenna — at 5 watts you really can't afford a mediocre antenna situation. the end fed half wave is honestly one of the best choices you can make for portable work, especially if you're throwing it in a tree. i've been running a similar setup for a few years now, sometimes i use a linked dipole so i can cover multiple bands without needing a tuner, just disconnects at the center and changes the length. takes maybe 30 seconds.

the ontario contact at qrp is nothing to sneeze at either, 40m can be magic in the evenings depending on conditions. you'll have days where you work europe on 5 watts and days where you can't get anyone to hear you from the next state over, that's just part of the fun i guess. keep an eye on the pota activators map, lots of folks doing exactly what you're doing and it's a good way to get contacts when cq feels slow.

dude this is basically exactly where i am right now, ive been thinking about building something for months but keep putting it off. what kit did you use exactly, was it hard to source the parts? i tried looking up HB-1B and got kind of confused about which version to get. also did you need any special tools for the smd stuff or just a regular iron