Building the Norcal 40A:
When the Norcal 40A arrived I spent about forty minutes inventorying the parts. This is how it arrives and this is what it looks like as the board gets populated with parts. In the right foreground you can see a three wire harness. It's attached to a 10-turn pot that I am substituting for the regular one-turn pot that comes with the kit.
Now that the board is complete it's a matter of connecting the KC-1 keyer/frequency counter with the Norcal 40A and then aligning it.
Here is the finished product along with a picture of the insides. Note the wires--the Norcal 40A by itself does not have any wiring. That is, all connections are done on the printed circuit board. I added the KC-1 keyer/frequency counter option which has eight connections to the Norcal 40A. The fun part about the KC-1 is that it doesn't have a digital readout. Instead you push the "Read/Search" button and it tells you the frequency in Morse code!
To accompany the Norcal 40A I just built a balanced-line tuner kit from Doug Hendricks' QrpKits.com.The tuner has a couple of unique features: when you tune up your rig it always sees 50 ohms because there is an absorptive bridge circuit. Also there is an LED that glows red until you you arrive at the resonant setting. When you arrive at the perfect match the LED no longer glows. It's easy to build and even easier to use. It's pictured below:
Other Qrp Resources: Juma kit radios Milestone Technologies
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