Save money by joining the bulk-orders for items below. (RSVP by March 27th)
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| Kanga Products EFHW antenna kit approx. $34 ea. Good for portable operation |
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| ARRL EFHW antenna kit approx. $85 ea. Good for fixed installation at home |
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| Minimalist End Fed Half Wave antenna approx. $10 Build a minimalist EFHW from parts. May include 3D printing strain relief. We'll design this ourselves, so final price may vary. Details TBD. |
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| QDX radio kit approx. $84 ea. Some extra kits are left over from activity last quarter. |
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| Coax Jumper Cable approx. $10 ea. For connecting antenna to radio |
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| USB-B to USB-C adapter cable $17 ea. For connecting the QDX radio to a computer. |
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| 12V Rechargable Battery approx. $28 ea. Good for powering the QDX radio for portable operation. |
| Typical Combinations | ||
| Basic option | Portable option | High-Performance home station |
(materials for dipole antenna included) |
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| *You can use the USB-B to USB-C adapter cable shown above, or you can use an old USB-B to USB-A cable from a printer if you have a spare. |
Quick summary:
- The Stanford Amateur Radio Club will hold weekly workshops (Saturdays, 1pm-3pm) to build antenna and radio kits, starting in Spring Quarter.
- Beginners are welcome. We'll have experienced mentors to guide you.
- You'll learn about radio waves, the ionosphere, antenna tuning, impedance matching, and antenna efficiency.
- We'll place a bulk order for the kits in the last week of March. For some items, we get a bulk discount.
- Contact me by March 27th if you are interested in joining the bulk orders. Let me know what items you are interested in.
- If you built a QDX radio kit last quarter, this is a good opportunity to build an antenna for it. If you didn't build a QDX kit last quarter, we still have some kits available.
- You'll keep your kit(s) at the end of the workshop.
The Stanford Amateur Radio Club will be holding a weekly kit-building workshop on Saturdays, 1pm-3pm, starting in the Spring Quarter. Last quarter, we built the QDX radio kit. The antenna kits and accessories above make nice additions to the QDX. The End-Fed Half-Wave (EFHW) antenna is the most popular antenna for portable operation, and can also be used for easy multi-band operation from a fixed location.
The EFHW consists of long wire (red wire in the photo above). One end is connected to a transformer (gray box) which connects to your radio. The other end is elevated above the ground using some support like a tree branch. We'll be placing orders for EFHW kits and parts. Let me know if you are interested in building one or more of the kits listed above.
The EFHW can be very lightweight and portable, but it needs a lot of space to deploy. A more compact antenna option is the magnetic loop antenna, like this one we built in 2021 for the 20m band (see below). We plan to get some parts to build an even more compact magnetic loop for the 10m band. Let me know if you are interested in helping design and build this antenna for club use and/or if you are interested in building one for yourself.
We also have some extra QDX radio kits from Winter Quarter. If you are interested in building one of these QDX radio kits let me know. Also, if you ran out of time and didn't complete your QDX kit from last quarter, we'll have mentors available to help you complete it at our Spring Quarter workshops, Saturdays 1pm-3pm. To use the QDX radio on your own, you'll need an Amateur Radio license, which requires passing a multiple-choice test, available online. For those who are not yet licensed, we'll help you study and pass your license test. Prof. Pauly's lecture slides from last quarter's license class are available here.