On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 06:30:03AM -0400 I heard the voice of DOUGLAS ZWIEBEL, and lo! it spake thus: > > I'm looking at the Ten Tec 13xx series adn the MFJ Cub (93xxK > series). Both are under $100. The keying waveform on the MFJ (as > per ARRL review) looks like key click city to me (looks to be zero > rise/fall time). > > Any comments on these radios? Any other suggestions?
I've built the MFJ Cub (17m). Assembly was easy, though getting the board in the case was a bit of an adventure. Extra fun was added by sub'ing a BNC for the RCA antenna jack, which lead to taking a hacksaw to the PCB ;) As for the waveform, I built it with the keyshape/QSK mods at <http://www.w1hue.us/Articles/CUB2.html>. I had a friend listen to it on the air and give it high marks for cleanliness, and the breakin is VERY fast and clean. Thumping is fairly significant with no antenna connected, but low enough to be thoroughly ignorable in real usage. It took some work to get the parts in place, but certainly seems worth it. (n.b.: I did that at build time, so I never saw how good/bad it would be without those mods. Alls I know is that it was good with them.) I DID do the sidetone level mod included in that bunch too, but it was rather difficult to pull off, and I'm not at all sure it's worth it. If I had it to do over again, I'm pretty sure I'd skip that part. The power output is significantly less than I was expecting. I'm not quite sure why. Casual checking didn't revealed anything, and I haven't had time to do more rigorous tracing. I also plan on doing the tuning linearization mod (see around same W1HUE site) at some point, both for the linearization and cutting down the tuning range a bit. Sadly, my radio time is near zilch of late :| Obligatory Elecraft tie-in to justify the list space: I warmed up for the build with, and used in the build/testing, a DL-1 8-} -- Matthew Fuller, N3TZJ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
