so i finally pulled the trigger on one of those QFT-90 scratch kits ive been eyeing for like two years and spent most of last weekend at the kitchen table with my soldering iron and a magnifying glass trying not to mess up the SMD components. my wife thought i had lost it completely. anyway got it all assembled and fired it up tuesday night expecting nothing and it just... worked. like immediately. i was putting out about 4 watts on 40m and made a contact with someone in ohio which doesnt sound like much but i live in vermont so that felt pretty good to me.

im kind of hooked now. i never really understood the appeal of running low power before, i always just assumed more watts = more better, but theres something really satisfying about making a contact when you know youre running 5 watts or less. feels like it actually means something? i dont know how to explain it.

anyone else got into kit building late and just totally fell down the rabbit hole? also curious if theres a good resource for learning more about the antenna side of things because i think my wire dipole is probably leaving a lot on the table.

welcome to the dark side haha. seriously though this is exactly how it happens for most of us, you make that first QRP contact and suddenly your linear amp starts collecting dust. i built a little 40m CW rig back in 2011 from dead bug parts just to see if i could and that was basically it for me, been chasing QRP ever since.

for the antenna question -- honestly a dipole is not leaving nearly as much on the table as you might think, the issue is usually height and orientation more than anything else. if you can get it up 30 feet or more and cut it to resonance for the band youre on youre going to do fine. where people really start squeezing extra performance out of QRP setups is with end fed half waves and a good tuner because you get a bit more flexibility for portable ops. there are some great threads over on the QRP-L mailing list if you haven't found that yet, old school but theres a ton of knowledge archived there.

dude same thing happened to me last spring, built one of the Penntek TR-35 kits and i was like ok this is a toy right and then i worked a station in colorado from georgia on like 3.5 watts and i actually yelled out loud and scared my cat. qrp is weirdly addictive. also the kit building part is its own whole thing, i find it really relaxing even when i have to desolder something three times because i put a cap in backwards