so ive been lurking on here for a while and finally pulled the trigger on building a little 40m CW rig based on the Minima design, well sort of based on it, i ended up changing quite a few things along the way. took me about 3 weekends spread out over 2 months because life gets in the way you know how it is.

the whole thing fits in an altoids tin which i know is kind of a cliche at this point but honestly its just the right size for what i was going for. running about 4 watts out into a linked dipole i strung up in the backyard and ive already made contacts into two states which for me is pretty exciting since ive never done QRP before.

the part that surprised me most was how much i had to learn about impedance matching and toroid winding just to get the PA stage to not run hot. i wound probably 6 different toroids before i got one that measured right. anybody else go through that learning curve? also curious if anyone has tips for making a rig like this more portable - right now the battery situation is kind of a mess, im just using a 3s lipo with a little regulator but it feels kinda janky and im sure theres a better way to do it.

man that toroid winding thing is real, i spent an entire saturday afternoon winding and measuring and rewinding on my first scratch build. the trick i eventually figured out was to use a wooden dowel to keep my spacing consistent while winding, makes a huge difference. also make sure your LCR meter is actually calibrated because mine was off and i was chasing my tail for a week thinking my math was wrong.

for the battery situation - honestly the 3s lipo with a buck converter isnt that janky, thats basically what i do except i put everything in a small project box and added an XT60 connector so i can swap packs fast. the key thing for portable ops is getting a good voltmeter on there somewhere so you dont kill the lipo by draining it too low. ive run that setup on a handful of SOTA activations and it works fine. whats the rig pulling current-wise at full output?

thats really cool, im jealous honestly. ive been wanting to build something from scratch but keep getting intimidated and just buying kits instead. what design resources did you use besides the Minima stuff? im trying to figure out where to even start with a from-scratch 40m rig