so ive been wanting to do this for probably two years and last weekend i finally just did it. built a little 40m CW transceiver from a kit — one of those pixie-style things, nothing fancy — and took it out to a picnic table at the state park about 20 minutes from my house. ran it off a 3s lipo i had from an old rc car project and just threw a wire up into a tree with a rock tied to some paracord.

honestly expected to just hear noise and maybe make a fool of myself but i ended up working a guy in ohio and another one down in tennessee, both solid copy, running maybe 500mw. i know thats not impressive to people who do this all the time but for me it was kind of a revelation. like i genuinely understood for the first time why people get so into this mode of operating.

the kit itself was pretty straightforward, only took me an afternoon to put together. i did have one solder bridge that took me forever to find but once i fixed that it fired right up. my only complaint is the frequency drift when it first warms up, takes maybe 5 minutes to settle down. is that normal for these little direct conversion jobs or is there something i can do about it? and also curious what people use for keyers when portable, i was just using my old straight key taped to a piece of wood which worked but felt ridiculous

the drift thing is totally normal especially with the cheaper crystal-based rigs, the crystal just needs to stabilize thermally. some people put the whole rig in a little insulated pouch for a few minutes before operating which sounds weird but actually helps. others will just key the rig lightly for a bit before trying to actually make contacts. not much else you can do without getting into TCXO territory which is kind of overkill for a pixie honestly.

for paddles i use a set of homebrew ones i made from some brass screws and a piece of acrylic i had laying around, works perfectly fine. there are also some really tiny commercial paddles made for portable ops — GHD and a few others make them small enough to fit in a shirt pocket basically. but honestly a straight key taped to wood is a time-honored tradition, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. welcome to the rabbit hole by the way, it only gets worse from here

Ohio and Tennessee on 500mw is legit, dont undersell that. i remember my first QRP contact felt the same way, something clicks when you realize how little power you actually need most of the time. the antenna is doing way more work than the radio anyway which is kind of the whole lesson QRP teaches you pretty fast.