CW!

I've been doing CW.

Specifically, I challenged myself to practice every day for 90 days.  I even got people on reddit to do it, too.  That's been going pretty well, but I couldn't actually *use* it.

The homebrew I had on my desk was taking a while to come together.  I mean, technically I could use what I had, but the T/R switch was noisy, and I could just stay on the one frequency with my NS-40.  And while I could do something with the mighty mike amp I had, I really wanted to use the class E I was working on, but progress there had stalled a bit.

So I decided to build a kit.  I ordered the QCX a while back, just finished it today.  It takes a while to go together (really dense board), but the instructions are great.  I got it up and it worked right away... then stopped.  I could still see a *tiny* signal on the scope, but not the several watts I was seeing before.  So I figured I blew the finals.  But before I pulled anything out, I poked around, emailed the list, asked on reddit chat.  And eventually found that the last toroid in the BPF wasn't connected anymore.  I had definitely checked it, and it was definitely working, but something must have shifted.  Anyway, burned off some more enamel and I was in business.

Was not sure my antenna was going to work - there are a few cuts in the coax - but tested with the nanovna and it looks to still be working.

I lashed up my homemade paddle to a cut-up headphone cord and sent out my CQ.

And someone heard me!  Well, RBN again, but still!

KO7SS - 753 miles away on something like 2.5 watts!