W6RCL / ALAN KAUL

(or Zen and the art of low power Amateur Radio [QRP])

QRP is Amateur Radio operating limited to 5 Watts power output for CW (Morse Code) or 10 Watts PEP for Single Sideband (voice). It is far more challenging than "regular" Amateur Radio operations (where the FCC allows up to 2,000 Watts input power). Where the high power operator frequently can "work the world" with brute strength and the force associated with high power, the QRP op has to do it with style, panache, cunning, luck and often sheer determination and willpower.

Click here for the "no mod" Mod to your commercially built QRO transceiver so you can run power levels down to milliwatts without changing anything on the rig -- it's all external and it plugs in!!

  • ALC "no mod" Mod!

    Audio from 40M, Tuesday 2/10/98, 1950 pst.... recognize any of the calls?!

    • I love contesting..... click here to see my logs for International DX Contests (WARNING--use the site at your own risk!! Possibility of QRO!!!

  • '98 ARRL CW Log

  • '97 CQWW CW Log

    I have a handful of QRP rigs which I have built and used over the years. My original rig, back in 1958 was QRP and I didn't even know it! It was a 6V6 "tri-tet" oscillator from the ARRL Handbook with a plug in coil for 80M and crystal (3715 k-Cycles---that was before someone changed it to k-Hertz!). I worked a couple of other locals from my high school in Spokane and little else! In 1975, I got excited when the CB-Radio craze made a lot of 23-channel rigs available (real CB-er's wanted the newer 40-channel radios!). I had a JC Penney's rig I bought for about $20 and proceeded to convert it to 10M AM after Norman Lefcourt, W6IRT, told me he was going to convert a $20-"Publicom" he bought at Leo's Stereo. In short order, Norm and I and a dozen or so others formed the QRP Chapter of 10-X International in the San Fernando Valley (motto: Little Fish, Big Ocean---attesting to Norm's other interest). We launched our own band plan and I wrote up the conversion of the Penney's rig and it became the First CB to 10M how-to-do-it article published by 73-Magazine back in about 1976.

    Following that, I dabbled with QRP when the ARRL published the DC "universal" radio schematic in about 1978 (dual JFET mixers, chip audio). At one of the hamfests in Southern California, I picked up a receiver board which had been made and was being distributed free by United Radio Amateur Club of Long Beach. When the ARRL later came out with the "universal" transmitter (2-MRF-472's in the final), I built that. Then the DeMaw designed "Barbados" receiver was described in QST (superhet with 3.579mHz colorburst crystal filter). After that I went back to the older QST's and found the Herring Aid 5 and built one using the first PC board I ever etched (I still have the herring Aid and it still covers 7000-7090!).

    Then I was transferred overseas and the first rig I took with me was the Universal Xmtr and the Barbados Rcvr, then-packaged in a 7x7x2 aluminum box and running (for about an hour) on 10 - 400ma, AA Nicads. The first day I was in my new assignment in Amman, I went to the Radio Amateur Society, met Mohammed - JY4MB, and got my reciprocal license JY9RL (the FCC could learn from Amman how to cut red-tape!). After that, I draped a few wires off the hotel balcony (I eventually made a 2-el 20M Yagi out of wires and spaced the director away from the decking with a broomstick!). I worked about 70 countries QRP including a handful of W and K stations (of course the JY-call adds a significant number of dB's to the outgoing signal!!).

    The current crop of QRP Rigs includes Norcal 40 (N6KR"s original design -- before the A and B mods, running about 2W out), the NN1G 40-30 for 30M (about 1W out), the SST-20M (with the W6EMD mods for 3W out), the 38-S (with 5W amp), the Two-Fer (one of Mike Bryce's friends designed it in 1988--my Two-Fer xmtr is for 20M and runs almost 5W to an transistor which was removed from a CB-rig) and the Radio Shack HTX-100 (10M SSB/CW, 5W/25W) rig. I have my original ARRL "universal" DC receiver which I'm writing a "conversion" article about, and I still have the "Herring Aid 5," too.

    I also have a few unbuilt kits in hiding somewhere: ONE Norcal Cascade, THREE - Ori Mizrahi-Shalom, AC6AN-designed, 38S's (I'd love to convert one for 15M and one for 6M if that's possible). And I just bought the Knightlite's SMiTe for 80M -- gotta sharpen the tip on the solder gun before I put that one together!

    Someday, I'll finish all the projects and have more time to be on the air!

    Come back and visit from time to time, I promise to keep changing this page frequently.

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