so i finally pulled the trigger on one of those QSX kits ive been eyeing forever and spent about three weekends getting it together. im not the best with a soldering iron but i took my time and it actually fired up on the first try which honestly shocked me. took it out to the local park yesterday with a random wire antenna thrown up in a tree and made four contacts on 40m running like 4 watts. the furthest was somewhere in ohio and im in virginia so not huge dx or anything but man it felt completely different from sitting in the shack with the big radio.

anyway i guess my question is — for people who do a lot of portable QRP, whats your go-to setup for antennas? i kind of just winged it with the random wire and a 9:1 unun i had laying around and it seemed to work okay but i feel like im leaving a lot on the table. also is it worth trying to get the efficiency up on the rig itself or is the antenna always going to matter more?

congrats on the first build firing up, that never gets old honestly. and yeah the antenna is always going to matter way more than squeezing another fraction of a watt out of the rig — with QRP you really cant afford a mediocre antenna. the random wire with a 9:1 works but its kind of a compromise for everything and optimized for nothing if that makes sense.

for park stuff i started using a linked dipole that i can reconfigure for different bands and its made a huge difference. takes maybe five extra minutes to set up but youre not fighting an impedance mismatch on every band. some guys swear by the end fed half wave with a 49:1 and i get it, only one feedpoint to deal with, but i find the linked dipole a bit more predictable. either way get that wire as high as you can, even a few extra feet helps noticeably at low power. sounds like you had a solid first outing though, ohio from virginia on 4 watts is pretty satisfying.

dude i just started doing QRP stuff too and the park thing is so much more fun than i expected. i was kind of skeptical that 5 watts would actually do anything but i worked a guy in tennessee last month and felt like i had just climbed a mountain lol. what kit did you end up going with btw? im debating between a few options and cant really decide