Small Transceivers and Low Power.

I now have a rather good collection of small, low power transceivers (and receivers)

Some are low cost Chinese builds, some are small kits assembled by me over time.

Some years ago I purchased some "single frequency" (crystal controlled) transceivers (from Ukraine) tuned to the old frequencies used for the JT65 mode. When FT8 took over, the use of JT65 ceased, because the over all efficiency of FT8 is much better, especially because the transmit sequence is 4 times faster, compensating for the lower sensitivity. and the frequency was moved 2kHz up. 

Usually the crystal frequencies can be tuned down fairly easily, tuning upwards is more limited, so I don't know if I can tune the local oscillator (yes, those are superhet transceivers). If I can, I will try that and use them for FT8.

This would make for a very nice, low power (1W) single frequency transceiver on the 40, 20 or 15m bands. Yes I have those three.

Then there are some simple single frequency kits, (Pixie, Rockmite, and others).

I do have some crystals for the 40, 30 and 20m bands for reception of FT8 and WSPR/QRSS frequencies, and I might use those for monitoring those frequencies.

All this is part of an ongoing (open) challenge of making QSOs on as many bands as possible with my own equipment, and expand this with using home built equipment, too.

Until now I have made QSOs with my own erquipment on all available (in Denmark) bands from 160m to 13cm The equipment can do 6cm and 3cm, too, but no contacts done yet.

Contacts with home made equipment has been done on 80, 40, 30 and 20m on HF, and 2m on VHF.

When I use the expression "home made" I include modified equipment intended for non amateur use, and partly home made equipment, like using a home made 2m transverter with my HF transceiver.

Somewhere I have a Pluto SDR "transceiver" that can be used for all bands from 70MHz to 6GHz, albeit with extremely low power, so that one is a candidate for home made equipment on 70, 144, 432, 1296, 2400, 3400 and 5760MHz, with added front ends for the different bands.

I wish I had more time to do all those experiments. (Don't we all?)