Well, it’s taking me some effort and time to process what just happened!
Apologies in advance, I’ll try to get my information across as efficiently as I can, but the story has a few elements and it’s a subject that I’m passionate about!
I worked Barry N1EU when he was living in NY State a few times with my RockMites. Barry loved chasing QRPp signals. I was always thrilled to work across the pond with my flea power. One thing bothered me though, the radios had been built from bought kits. I wanted a home brew transatlantic QSO. I was tempted to the dark side of SSB and I built a home brew 20m SSB transceiver from scratch. On my first activation with the SSB transceiver, I worked several VK stations - to this day, my proudest ham radio achievement. I still hadn’t got that transatlantic QSO though! Barry to the rescue! I arranged a sked with Barry N1EU and I was able to manage a scratchy S2S with my home brew SSB rig. You would think that my itch had been scratched, but no, I still felt disappointed that I’d never managed a home brew transatlantic CW QSO.
A home brew (not built from a kit) transatlantic QSO has been my target for several years. At first, I built a Manhattan style RockMite 20 on a tuna can, I’d worked Barry N1EU plenty of times on my kit built RockMite 20. Unfortunately the keen SOTA chasers from the east coast US seem to have moved on to pastures new (purely anecdotal).
I didn’t have much joy with my Tuna can RockMite, so I decided to build something with a bit more power. I’d designed a PCB for SMD components to do my ‘construct an SMD project on a SOTA summit’ project. The transmitter was built for 40m and puts out about 2 watts. I had ordered 5 circuit boards and only used two - one built as practice and then one built on the summit of Ingleborough. I reckoned it would be fairly simple to build one of the transmitter boards and modify it for 20m. The Kendal Mint rig was born - about 2 watts on 20m with a direct conversion receiver.
No joy with the Kendal Mint rig either 
I quite enjoy using the rig and 2 watts output should be quite useful.
I was driving along the road on Thursday lunchtime this week and I suddenly had the idea that I could try to build a 15m RockMite for the transatlantic event. Some 21.060MHz crystals had been delivered with the mail that morning, intended for a project in the future. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head and on Thursday evening, I located one of my RockMite PCBs I started building. By 1021 yesterday morning, I’d successfully done the smoke test!
In addition, I finished off my mini amplifier to boost my RockMites a little bit. I put together a low pass filter for 15m last night for the amplifier. I’d built the amplifier with a socket for different low pass filters and had intended to use it with my scratch built RockMite 17.
Time was running out and I discovered last night that my RockMite 15m had chirp - I’d been giving it a health check. I did a bit of thinking overnight and reckoned that the oscillator feedback capacitors were too large in value. At 7am this morning I was in the shack swapping capacitors! Thankfully with the reduced value feedback capacitors, the chirp was much reduced.
For fun, I thought that I would do a home brew theme for the transatlantic QSO party. I thought it would be my best chance for a home brew transatlantic CW QSO in a while. I chose to activate Ingleborough G/NP-005 as it has excellent take off to the west over Morecambe Bay. Ingleborough is my nearest summit too, although it’s a decent walk from whichever route you tackle it.
I started off with my Kendal mint rig - I thought that there was a slim chance of an early transatlantic QSO on 20m before the higher bands got going. My rig is crystal controlled on a fixed frequency and my QRL? was answered with ‘yes’. Bummer. I listened for a bit and it was Jens HB9EKO/P using the frequency. Oh well, at least I could call in for an S2S! I worked Jens on HB/ZH-004 and then waited, hoping that Jens would QSY, however he seemed to be having too much fun!
I was worried about not getting a free frequency with my other rigs, so I decided to set up on 15m with my new RockMite and amplifier, I see around 3 watts maximum with that combination.
I was thankful to find the 15m frequency quite clear, so I called CQ. EA1AER found me first, followed by OE6GND. The RockMite worked! I then had a bit of a surprise- I was called by KF9D! Oh my goodness I had done it! My 4th QSO was transatlantic! I think my Morse went a bit wobbly after that! 15m just kept producing the QSOs, my brain was turning to mush! A few minutes after my first transatlantic QSO I worked N6PKT in Arizona - not only transatlantic but west coast! K8ITU provided my first transatlantic S2S operating from W8V/PH-082. The DX S2S just kept coming and I couldn’t really believe I was doing it with gear built in a couple of days in my shed!
Eventually I reckoned I ought to try my 17m RockMite and I worked a few, including Roy WN3F on W4V/SH-030 for the second time (I’d worked Roy on the RockMite 15). Roy won’t know how special that QSO was to me - the RockMite 17m is truly scratch built, no circuit board in sight. I’d done it properly - a proper scratch built transatlantic CW QSO and it was an S2S too! Does it get any better?!
A very successful project and outing. What next?
Transatlantic QSOs -
KF9D, N6PKT, WF4I, K8ITU S2S W8V/PH-082, ND0C, K6YK, WB2FUV S2S W2/GC-020, WN3F S2S W4V/SH-030 (×2), NM3A S2S W3/PT-007, WB6POT, AC1Z S2S W1/NL-017, VA2EO S2S VE2/ES-034, K8LJG, N0UR
73, Colin
but 15m band didn’t let me down. Amount of QSOs with west coast is impressive, 4 NA S2S is also very good, and finally logged 
