Christmas 2021 and Santa brought me a new kit to build from QRP Labs. The seconds addition of the QDX with some nice improvments included. It only took me about two hours to build without rushing and with no problems encountered. Winding the toroids took most of my time as there was not much in the way of through-hole components and as usual, Hans has all the SMD components pre-installed (All on the reverse side of the PCB).

So the build:

It all started by cleaning the board, filling the edges of the PCB and on to adding the caps & diodes…

Then on to the inductors, followed by the transistors…

The Transformer was next which I made for a 12v supply because all my gear runs of 12v, so made sence!

Multitrap inductor was next…

Now the other coils and the low pass filter toroids.

Next came the trifilar toroid which was new to me but didn’t cause any concerns! And with the last few connectivity items and dropping it into the case, I was done!!

All I needed now was to test it… this started on a Windows 7 laptop. After installing WSJT-X and downloading the driver, a quick setup and I was running. I also wanted to get it working on my MacBook Pro m1. So again after the downloads, I had an issue with a couple of error messages. A quick Google and on the wsjtx.group.io, the question had already been asked by Ken W6BZY and a solution provided by Jim W6JHB with a coule of terminal commands (Thanks Guys). Following Jim’s instructions, this got me up and running on my Mac… Happy Days!!