I have always been envious of the HF operators that have those small CW transceivers that fit inside an Altoids tin or even smaller. Lately, I’ve been in search of the VHF/UHF equivalent of the tiny transceiver.
I found this 70cm transceiver that I programmed up for the US ham band. I claim that it is the world’s smallest SOTA station. (It is important to note that my size criteria requires the antenna to be fully deployed. If you string up an end-fed wire that is 10m long, then your station is 10m long.)
Yes, it actually works. RF output is 2W. Sorry, only single band 70 cm.
Yes, there seems to be a ton of tiny UHF transceivers coming out of China. They seem to be targeted to on-site communications for retail stores, restaurants, etc.
Those new tiny UHF radios are fun! I’ve got a couple…
But how about this one - a self-contained pixie in an Altoids Smalls tin? True, the antenna is “larger,” but by weight?
300mW at 14.060MHz. Fully self-contained kit. With 32 ft of 30 ga wire and the antenna winder, it weighs less than 2 oz. How does it work? Good enough. Best contact thus far was with K3TCU in PA, 2,300 mi away from the summit was on. Doing the math, that’s about 20,500mi/lb of radio, or about 75,000km/kg. On a good day, the Pixie puts out 300mW, so that also equates to about 7,000mi/watt.
Most of those radios tune pretty broadly, about 400 to 470 MHz.
Yes, I programmed this one for the 70 cm ham band. It does CTCSS (PL) and DCS on transmit and receive. Separate transmit/receive frequencies are supported so it can handle repeater offsets.
Good stuff! In keeping with VHF SOTA activation I’m exploring converting the QCXmini (when I receive it) into a 6m transceiver. I’ve read it might be possible!
