QMX: a year of great fun!

[EA2BD]

May 24^th 1844: “What hath God wrought?”

That was what Samuel Morse first sent while doing the inauguration of the telegraph line, a pivotal moment in communication history.

180 years later, I had a similar feeling when I got my QMX at home, as a Christmas present:

What has Hans brought?

That’s what I cried as I switched on and got the first QSO’s with this tiny jewel. When I look at its size, features and price I can’t be more grateful with its creator, Hans @G0UPL, for its development and offering to the ham community.

During this year I have been using my QMX here and there, comparing it with some other compact rigs I own (MTR-3B, KX3, truSDX, FX-4CR…), and I must say I’m really impressed.

This tiny but complete QRP rig is very interesting for Portable operation, perfect for SOTA, holiday trips, or any other casual use.

I won’t write a deep technical review here, but let me just share a few special occasions that made me smile after using the QMX during these months. These QSO show how this versatile and trusty little rig performs.

1) ARRL DX CW contest

I’m not a devoted contester, but I occasionally spend a few hours in some of the big CW annual contests. One of them is the ARRL DX.

This year my chance was scarce: I had to travel that weekend and stay in my father’s in law apartment. Just in case, I grabbed the QMX, three 18650 LiIon cells, the ZM-2 manual tuner and a few meters of wire.

To be honest, this wasn’t the first time I have used a transceiver with a small indoor antenna in that small bedroom, but never for a contest before!

I hanged about 4 meter of wire on the curtain, near a window facing West, in a ugly inverted L shape and entered the contest in 21 MHz single band QRP, unassisted. I operated by hand with my iambic paddle, without a computer, and logged the QSO on a simple app in my smartphone.

I ran search & pounce a few hours and was shocked to log 41 QSO with North America, what?

I know propagation helped me a lot, as well as those skilled and patient NA ops who got my 599 005 report (4 watts actually). I was astonished on how well the QMX performed with a good reception for a crowded band condition.

My small score gave me the first position in the category in my country (a new country record in fact), and a 6th global DX Worldwide: a great fun!

2) Upgraded firmware: SSB onboard!

QMX was already an excellent rig when G0UPL did a final trick: he spent many hours (months!) refining a firmware update to add SSB for free without any hardware modification in the rig.

He did an excellent job and nowadays we get a fully operational SSB + CW rig. I managed to do the firmware update and the required calibration procedure on a dummy load.

Ï’m using a tiny homemade microphone and find the voice is working with a good quality, taking into account the super compact size of this rig. Now I can use both CW and SSB with it.

Only one remark: the rig is sensible to RF feedback: adding a proper choke in the coax prevents such issue avoiding the rig to TX on SSB.

3) Chasing portable, holiday style

One of the funniest things I do in summer is chasing when on holidays. With a palm size rig like the QMX I can’t afford to put it in my luggage. I enjoyed chasing from a garden or a park on a family walk, in example, or setting a wire tossed in the attic of our house in the village.

Among a variety of locations I operated, I love chasing from a beach. I know that many hams wouldn’t dare to setup in a crowded beach, surrounded by many people, but I found my own unobstrusive solution: a short 3 meter pole near my seat to hold a multiband loaded vertical and a few (4) short radials on the sand, over my towels.

Spot on a Ham antenna there. Is this compatible with everybody’s leisure?

Well, some people look at me but I have lots of fun concentrated with my silent paddle at hand and the tiny QMX on my knees, enjoying a chase with a splendid noiseless reception!

I grabbed some SOTA chaser QSO this way and I even activated a POTA park from a beach, both CW and SSB! Did you ever operate in a beach, looking at the sea next to you?

4) QMX to QMX

I have had some nice QSO chasing SOTA with other users of the QMX, like @EA1AER, or @HB9BAB in example. This is specially rewarding when the other station is a DX.

This summer I had the chance to chase in the night a couple of US hams that were activating POTA running a QMX.

Let’s pick one. Jim, WB0RLJ, is a friend I have frequently chased this year, because he activates repeatedly every week (daily!) the same park, US-4011. He uses a variety of rigs and is a solid copy at my shack, despite being central state in Nebraska.

I had a nice QSO with him with my QMX from the beach in July. The coastal line from a park at night is fancy!

We had that recorded in video:

This is how I heard him cqing:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xs5GONrK8Hs

and that’s him working me: (use headphones if you really want to hear me!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OBfube0f38&t=3340s

After this awesome chase with my QMX using the small 3 meter vertical antenna near the sea, we agreed to try a QMX to QMX contact on both sides.

I carefully planned this extreme qso as this wouldn’t happent from that beach, but inland. I prepared an easy to setup vertical quarter wave for 14 MHz, that I could deploy alone in the dark at midnight, in the scheduled time to meet on air.

Despite a suboptimal propagation, with high A & K indexes, on August 11th we tried this contact. Jim wasn’t in the band yet, and I used first a Yaesu FT-857 at 25 watts to CQ and worked a number of NA chasers from my park. Then I saw a spot from Jim and I QSYed to call him and logged the P2P.

That’s Jim’s setup:

This is how I heard him on the FT-857:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G0pVUenwUDg

And that’s him answering my call:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9sOmXNfBG4&t=1230s

After the QSO, I then swapped my rig and connected the QMX. I waited for a gap on his pile up and called him again. Bingo! It was great to get him, this time a QMX-2-QMX contact, despite the low signals and the QSB playing against us, thanks Jim!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9sOmXNfBG4&t=1720s

5) Long hikes and SOTA

I find the QMX is the perfect choice for a long hike, when you plan to activate a remote summit and you wanna get a minimal gear in your rucksack.

I had the chance to do such a lightweight hike and it helped a lot to make things easier. Pictures of EA2/NV-023 a few days ago, on Dec-08th :

Conclusion

What else could I say?

Thanks Hans for all your efforts! See you in the bands, perhaps using this tiny jewel?

I’m looking forward to use it again in the following Christmas days.

73 Ignacio EA2BD

[HB9EBE]

Great report Ignacio! Couldn’t agree more with you! The QMX is a really fun machine with a pleasant low noise reception. Almost a no-brainer to take along “just in case”, with a few meters of wire and a Z or L match. I have no collection to compare it to, except the QCX mini 20. But I’m so happy with this little deck of cards that I don’t feel the urge to look elsewhere….. Looking forward to QMX to QMX!

73, Peter

[G0UPL]

Dear Ignacio

Wow, what a wonderful report! I’m so happy to hear you’re enjoying your QMX! It certainly sounds like you used yours a lot more than I’ve had time to use mine. Work is keeping me very very busy indeed. I have a QMX+ which I use daily for Winlink email with a Pi400 computer. Not the same thing, of course. Congratulations on all your operating successes with QMX.

I don’t consider QMX finished yet. There are still lots more features I want to implement over the coming months. So it’ll keep getting better!

73 Hans G0UPL

QRP Labs Kits

[VK3SQ]

…

Geoff vk3sq

[M1BUU]

Thank you for that Ignacio!

I’m in awe that not only do you write interesting, inspiring posts, you do it in a language which is not your first!

The QMX is certainly a disruptive product, the features and performance far exceed anything else it that price bracket, in fact radios costing several times more struggle to compete.

I was following the progress by Hans getting QMX to do SSB and I predicted that sales would sky rocket. I’d read lots of information about QMX being fragile and it’s hard to form a balanced view. By last December it seemed that the majority of QMX failures could be attributed to incorrect care and feeding, rather than a fundamental flaw. Hans seems to be at pains to state that this is an ‘experimental’ radio, it’s not a finished and polished product, so it’s accepted that there will be issues. The firmware is often buggy, but each version just gets exponentially better. If you know what you’re buying, then QMX is a massively impressive radio and exceptional value for money. I decided to take the plunge and order my first QMX in time for Christmas last year, with money given to me by my mother-in-law (she funds a lot of my radios, indeed I bought my first RockMite kit with money gifted from her, and look where that got me!). I wanted to get a kit before the word got out about QMX SSB!

I had been taking part in the SOTA 10m activities so I opted to buy a hi band QMX. The radio went together OK and worked without debugging.

I tried the SSB beta firmware when it was released a few months after building the rig. I got the SSB calibration to complete one time but then I upgraded to the official SSB firmware and the SSB calibration won’t complete on one band. The rig still works fine though. It bugs me that I can’t do the full calibration and if I knew what I could rework, I’d do it! Rewind a transformer perhaps?

I went to the Isles of Tiree and Coll in August. I’d been to the Inner Hebrides the year before on my bicycle but ended up on Mull instead of Coll due to a CalMac ferry failure (MV Clansman). I’d taken my FT-817 and found that it was quite bulky and heavy to take via bicycle. I had wanted to activate a HEMA summit on Coll - the island is too flat to have a SOTA qualifying summit. The HEMA folk tend to hang out on 40m SSB, so I needed a rig that could do that.

After confirming my trip to Tiree and Coll this year, I ordered another QMX, a mid band version, as I didn’t fancy trying to re-work my other QMX. The second kit went together much nicer and it calibrates without issue on all bands.

The mid band QMX fit very nicely into my bike luggage and I hurriedly made up a 40m/20m dipole to go with it. I was only interested in qualifying the summits on Tiree and Coll, I wasn’t looking for many QSOs. I bought a 6m carbon mast from Decathlon to support the antenna.

The operations on Tiree and Coll were a success despite poor band conditions, the QMX was a joy to use.

*Operating 20m SSB on Beinn Hough, Isle of Tiree.*

Using the QMX on SSB on Ben Hogh, Isle of Coll.

I wanted to have a go at building a QMX+ so I ordered a kit about 3 weeks ago and it arrived in about 10 days after ordering. My idea was to build the rig and then sell it in time for Christmas, allowing one lucky ham to bypass the several month waiting for an assembled unit. I’ve said my goodbyes to the QMX+ at the post office this morning.

QMX+ Lots of lovely toroids!

The QMX now rules the roost at M1BUU, I don’t think I’ll ever not have an MTR to hand, but QMX is my go to radio now.

73, Colin

[IU1KGS]

@M1BUU

QMX+ Lots of lovely toroids!

Those are some very neatly wound toroids, a sight to see Colin.

[M8BIA]

@IU1KGS

Those are some very neatly wound toroids, a sight to see Colin.

I think he should get an arts council grant for those! That is a work of art!

[WB2PHL]

My QMX in action.

Up on W2/GC-112.

[M5OTA]

Great report Ignacio @EA2BD !

And great rig, thanks Hans @G0UPL !

I’m in the early days of using my QMX for SOTA, but I have a feeling it is likely to become my go to SOTA HF rig too.

[K1PAP]

mine should be arriving tomorrow!!! looking forward to trying it out

[EA4R]

Ignacio….I’m not sure if you like QMX or not? .

I´ve had mine for a year now too. I haven´t used it as much as you, but I´m still amazed at how good it is. We have to get together and I`ll let you play with the KT-005…

73 de EA4R Alf

[M8BIA]

Mine arrived this week. After my first trip out with the QMX I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Band conditions weren’t great and it was fairly quiet, but even so I got every station I chased. SSB signal reports were consistently good. My first QSO was a 10-point S2S, so it’s definitely a keeper!

The downside of the case it that it weighs more than the radio LOL

[M5OTA]

That case is a nice fit Martin @M8BIA , is it a Peli 1030 Micro ?

[M8BIA]

Yes Tony… you know your Peli cases! As I mentioned it is heavier than the radio! But I can get my headphones/mic/cable/power lead and bnc2so239 adapter in. It is bomb proof though.

[M5OTA]

Thanks. I originally asked for general info on the case, but after approx 5 seconds of being slightly less lazy and Googling edited my post to ask if it was that specific one!

[N0IPA]

Great review, Ignacio. Thanks.

Jim - N0IPA

[EA2BD]

@G0UPL

I’m so happy to hear you’re enjoying your QMX!

Hello Hans,

What else could we do to thank your efforts? It did worth it !

I’m happy to read you’re planning some more development and new features, stay tuned to check them…

@M1BUU

you do it in a language which is not your first!

Hi Colin, writting such articles has been my “secret” method to keep my English lessons alive and has allowed me reading lots of interesting info, get new skills and, even, to make new friends!

It’s great you get some extra funds and spend your free time, not only having your own projects, but also helping others to get new rigs assembled, Horay!

Loved seeing your nice pictures of your adventures. What will be your 2026 challenge? I’m sure I’ll read about it, and maybe we’ll get another QSO that time ;o)

Have fun my friend!

@EA4R

I`ll let you play with the KT-005

Hi Alf, thanks for the QSO this morning, you sounded great in my QMX.

It’s nice you mention about that tiny ATU that seems an ideal companion for the QMX. Perhaps you should post a picture and share your thoughts about that gear. I’ll be glad to share an activation whenever possible.

Thanks all for your comments and support. See you in the bands

73 Ignacio

[DL6GCA]

For me, it was also a special year with the QMX…

Last year I built a 12V QMX for 10m-20m… and despite all my care, I overlooked a blob of solder that fell under the washer. The result was that I destroyed the QMX the very first time I switched it on.

While troubleshooting, I became unsure of myself and bought a second, ready-made 9V QMX for 10m-20m at a good price. During comparative measurements, I slipped with the probe on this one and destroyed it as well. - Now I had two defective QMX units for 10m-20m. The CPU was destroyed in both.

There’s probably no one in Germany who knows more about QMX than Ludwig @DH8WN. Ludwig offered his help and repaired both QMX units for me, and they work perfectly.

SOTA-BW will be responsible for the SOTA booth at the HAM RADIO in Friedrichshafen next year. I’ll be putting the 9 V QMX in the raffle at the next Ham Radio 2026.

Meanwhile I’ve built a third QMX 15m-60m antenna, which works wonderfully.

The power comes from an Eremit battery, and I soldered a diode into both the positive and negative leads directly at the Powerpole connector.

The @HB9EAJ end-fed antenna is a perfect match. With the QMX 60m-15m, it covers all bands. Together with the Decathlon 6m mast, I’m then QRV on 6 bands with a weight of 1.5 kg. I attach the wire to the mast with cable clips. This allows the wire to slide smoothly.

btw: …I haven’t even modified the QMX for SSB yet… and I don’t miss it at all.

73 Armin

[M0TKF]

I also love my QMX and it travels with me around the world!!

I have updated for SSB, but have not tried Tx SSB yet. What are recommendations / suggestions for small mic that has been found to work well? I don’t have 3D printer… but other than that building / assembly is ok (I assembled QMX ok !)

Cheers, 73 Roy

[M1BUU]

I don’t have a 3D printer either so I bought a mic kit from G7UFO.

73, Colin