Hello dear Sota friends,
I have just finished building a Pwr & Swr meter kit. I wanted to have one to protect TRX without meters, like the MTR, ATS, SW, Rockmite, SST… when on Portable.
Nowadays I own a 30 MHz SST and I hope that I’ll soon have my MTR ready.
Although I have tried to use a SWR bridge with a red Led to indicate when SWR is high, it is not that easy using it when exposed to the bright sun light. It does not provide accurate measurements either to check for resonance on the antennas.
Even in the case when you carry along a resonant antenna cut for the desired frequency, the best is to be sure you don’t put your rig on risk of frying up the finals in the event of bad configuration of your antenna.
There are some kits available but I couldn’t easily find a small and lightweight kit to carry with me for a Sota activation. That’s why I built the one I want to share with you.
The kit is called NoGaWatt and produced by NOGA, the North Georgia QRP Club (no, I don’t have any commercial link or interest… ;o)
They provide you with a PCB, components and analog meters, including a dummy load. You have to supply an enclosure and connectors. It’s cheap even shipped overseas.
Building is straight forward, it’s a surface mount project similar to Manhattan style construction. In the end it’s a palm-size, lightweight device (122 grams for my version), appropriate for HF bands and limited to 10w power max.
You can see some pictures here both for assembled PCB & finished rig:
Maybe it’s of your interest.
Best regards and safe activation! 73
Ignacio EA2BD