so i've been wanting to do this for probably two years now and i finally just committed and built one of those Pennywhistle kits, the 40m version. took me about three evenings spread across a couple weeks because i kept second-guessing my solder joints and redoing stuff that was probably fine to begin with.

anyway got it done, threw it in a bag with my little notebook and a 9ah lipo i had from a drone project, and drove out to the county park about 20 minutes from my house. strung up a wire antenna between two trees — just a simple end fed with a 9:1 unun i built last winter — and honestly i was not expecting much. figured id make one or two contacts and call it a win.

worked 11 stations in about 90 minutes running around 4 watts. one guy in new mexico who was pretty loud, couple stations in the southeast, even heard but couldnt pull a european station out of the noise. the whole setup weighs almost nothing and i genuinely had more fun than i have on my home station in months. something about the constraints of it, the low power and simple wire, makes every contact feel like it actually means something.

if anyone is on the fence about getting into QRP or building a kit i really cant recommend it enough. my soldering is mediocre at best and the kit still works fine.

man this is great to hear, i've been eyeing those kits for a while. did you do anything special with the antenna or just a basic end fed wire? i'm always a little sketchy about whether a 9:1 unun actually does much at those power levels or if it's just adding loss but i honestly dont know enough to say one way or the other.

also curious what the lipo situation looks like — do you have to mess with a voltage regulator or does the rig just take it directly? my background is more on the digital modes side so i'm learning a lot about the analog/battery side of things still.

11 contacts in 90 min with 4w and a wire in a park is a solid afternoon honestly. people underestimate how well 40m does during the day especially to closer skip distances, sounds like conditions were cooperating. the near miss on the european contact is what gets you hooked — once you actually pull one of those through on QRP you start rethinking what low power really means.

i've been doing mostly SOTA activations with a Mountain Topper the last couple years and the weight thing you mentioned is real. there's a point where your whole station fits in a jacket pocket and that just changes how you think about operating. welcome to the rabbit hole i guess, it only gets more expensive from here in the best possible way.