so ive been wanting to try QRP for a while now and last month i finally sat down and built one of those Rockmite kits, the 40m version. took me longer than i expected mostly because i kept second-guessing myself on the toroids but got it done.

took it out to the state park Saturday with a random wire antenna strung up between some trees and honestly i was not prepared for how well it worked. made contacts into two states running 500mW which sounds impossible to me still even though i was there. the battery lasted basically all day which was another thing i wasnt expecting, just a little 3ah lipo and it barely made a dent.

i guess my question or thought or whatever is — for people who do a lot of portable QRP, do you bother with a tuner or do you just cut the antenna for the band? i was just running the wire as-is and it seemed fine but im wondering if im leaving something on the table without a tuner. also thinking about building a ZM-2 or something similar but not sure if its overkill for what im doing.

congrats on the first build, Rockmites are great little rigs. on the tuner question — honestly it depends. if youre just working one band and you have the wire cut close to resonant you can usually get away without one. but once you start wanting flexibility, like maybe 40 and 20 on the same outing, a tuner really does open things up. i built a small L-network tuner years ago that fits in an altoids tin and it goes everywhere with me now. the ZM-2 is solid if you want something more capable but for casual portable ops the simple stuff works fine. the real magic with QRP portable is keeping the whole kit light enough that you actually want to take it out, and tuners add weight and fiddling. id say try a few more outings without one first and see if you feel like youre missing anything.

500mW into two states thats awesome. i just started looking at QRP stuff myself and the Rockmite was on my list. did you find the kit hard to build or pretty straightforward if you have some soldering experience? im decent at soldering just never done RF stuff before so the toroids make me a little nervous lol