This week we have another kit build! I was part of the team that organized and ran a club build for the Kalamazoo Amateur Radio Club (https://w8vy.org/ ) last weekend. We had a great turn out and had a lot of fun building the QRPGuys Digital Power Port ( https://qrpguys.com/qrpguys-digital-power-port ).
The device is a power distribution board designed to fit on to the short end of a gel cell battery. It can be run on either a SLA or LiFePo4 based battery techologies, a resetable poly fuse, has a convienient charging port, a voltmeter with digital display, and a handy on/off switch.
Since I found myself selling kits, setting up tables and soldering stations, running around assiting the attendees etc… I didn’t get to build the kit with the rest of the group. I did get a chance to sit down and build the kit later in the week however and I had a great time doing it.
The kit it self is relatively simple and low part count, however the trickiest part of this kit is the modification and assembly of the voltmeter display. This section is tricky because of the tight tolerances of the standoffs and nuts the attach the voltmeter to the main board. During the club build since we didn’t have the patience or enough appropriate files to cut down the nuts and standoffs for all the attendees so we simply used some zip ties and hot glue to hold them together. It certainly works in a pinch, but at the comfort of home we have the time and ability to do things right, so I filed down the spacers and nuts, dry fitted it together before cutting down the lead wires, pre-tinning them and then performing the final soldering and assembly to the main board.
The rest of the components are pretty standard and go together quickly. As a club we offered 2 modifications. The first was an upgraded poly fuse that could handle more ampreage, and the second was some anderson power pole leads for the output posts to make it easier to plug into standard equipment.
I added this to my QRP kit that I took out with me to my first POTA activation, I think it’ll be a handy unit to have both at home and portable for any type of QRP operations or bench testing purposes.
Kits really are some of the most fun you can have in my opinion. I’m slowly working towards having a completely kit or home built based qrp station. I think it’s a fun alternative to the normally expensive hobby amateur radio can sometimes be.