so ive been eyeing QRP stuff for probably two years now and kept putting it off because i assumed id need like really good antennas and conditions to make it worth doing. finally just pulled the trigger on building a little 40m CW rig from a kit, one of those bitx-style boards you see floating around, nothing fancy. took me a weekend and a half to get it going and i honestly burned one of the toroids the first time around but got it sorted.

anyway took it out to the county park last saturday with a 40 foot wire i just threw up in a tree, ran it off a small lipo pack, whole setup probably weighed under two pounds. worked a station in ohio from here in tennessee on maybe 4 watts, guy gave me a 559 which i was pretty happy with honestly. then just chatted around and heard a lot more than i expected to. the whole thing felt way more satisfying than sitting at home spinning the dial on my big rig i dont know why exactly.

anybody else get that feeling with QRP? like theres something different about making a contact when you know youre running low power. also curious if anyone has tips for squeezing a bit more efficiency out of the final stage, the thing runs warm after a while and im not sure if thats normal or if my output matching is slightly off.

yeah that feeling is 100% real and it doesnt really go away. ive been doing QRP for probably fifteen years now and still get a little kick out of a dx contact on 5 watts. theres something about the constraints that makes you actually think about what youre doing — antenna placement, time of day, band conditions — stuff you can just brute force with a kilowatt but cant with QRP.

on the heat thing, little bit of warmth is pretty normal especially if youre running close to rated output for a while. id check your low pass filter first, if the output matching isnt right the transistor is working harder than it needs to. also double check your SWR on that wire, a random wire without a decent ground or counterpoise can look pretty ugly and the final stage takes the hit. some guys use a small 9:1 unun and a few radials just laying on the grass and it makes a real difference. dont stress too much though, those kits are usually pretty robust and a warm final after 20 minutes of operating is not the same as a hot one.

ohio from tennessee on 4 watts is solid, nice work. i just started getting into qrp this spring and honestly the park activations are addictive. i havent built anything from scratch yet, just using a little commercial rig, but reading this makes me want to try a kit. which board did you end up going with if you dont mind me asking?