I finished building my Optimized QRP Xcvr on March 6/09. In the first 11 days, I made 20 contacts with it, mostly into the New England area, but also to Alabama, Norway, and the Honduras!

The rig is W7EL's Optimized QRP transceiver, from August 1980 QST, designed by Roy Lewallen. The rcvr sounds great, the xmtr has clean keying, and the output is 1.5 watts. The VFO is stable and tunes from 7 to 7.140. The QSK is absolutely perfect - the best I've ever heard! Roy did a marvelous job designing this rig.

After two months, the number of contacts was up to 51, and the dx now includes Italy, Uraine, Cuba, the Cayman Islands and Slovenia!
Isn't this great for a little 1.5 watt rig.

If you decide to build this radio, get the article from the Handbook, which has the latest updates through July 1990, or use the link above.

Here's what my rig looks like. I've since added a Norcal keyer, a vernier drive, and an outboard digital readout.

This is what the rig looked like in the beginning stages. The regulator is at the back, the vfo in the middle, the xmtr on the right, and the mixer on the left. On the extreme right is the low pass filter, and in back of that is the dummy load.

This is a large picture showing details of the construction.

The xmtr is on the left, the vfo in the middle, and the rcvr is on the right.

The rcvr is in the foreground.

This is the rcvr section.

This is the 1.5W output xmtr section.

PA and RF Choke supplying 12V to the collector.

Buffer amp and binocular core.

Diode ring mixer. Trifilar wound binocular cores using a very small #34 gauge wire lifted from an old rf choke. A little Manahttan thrown in with the ugly.