K8IQY's Original 2N2/40 Rig

2N2/40 Background - In the fall of 1997, the Northern California QRP Club (NorCal) sponsored a contest. The contest objective was to design and build a functional amateur radio transceiver, using a maximum of 22, 2N2222 type transistors. The judging of the entries was part of the FDIM QRP forum held in May, in conjunction with the 1998 Dayton Hamvention. Numerous, good designs were entered into the contest. I was fortunate to have won first place with my 2 watt, 40 meter CW transceiver. This page provides highlights of my design and construction and contains the documentation required for building this transceiver.

Status - A comprehensive article covering the design and construction of this transceiver was in the winter issue of QRPp, the official magazine of NorCal. The article contains schematics, part lists, and detailed part placement layouts to allow reproduction of the rig by interested amateurs, and in particular, new scratch builders. Along with the graphical information are detailed descriptions of the various circuits, and rationale for their selection. The article is profusely illustrated by QRP notable Paul Harden, NA5N. Paul still has reprints of the original QRPp article available. Some errors crept in to the Winter QRPp article. A sheet containing all of the corrections that I know about is under the corrections link. Sorry for the inconvenience.





Documentation - Here is a link to the original documentation (in PDF format) for the 2N2/40 article published in the Winter 1998 Issue of QRPp. Missing are the wonderful illustrations that Paul Harden, NA5N did for that article. Perhaps, I can get Paul to agree to putting that information into the public domain so that both the words and illustrations are available to everyone. What I would do is scan the origianl article into PDF format.



What's Here - There is a variety of 2N2/40 information on this page. The first link has pictures of my original prototype rig that won the design/building contest at Dayton, in May of 1998. This second link has photos of the second rig that I built for the QRPp article. It was done on a larger 5-inch X 7-inch substrate to provide more building area for less experienced builders. You will notice in those photos that the rig now supports RIT. That feature was added for the version in the QRPp article so that the rig could be used for DXing and FOX hunting. This set of photos show how the RIT feature was implemented.

For those who didn't subscribe to QRPp, here are the specifications for the rig, along with the schematic diagrams . They have change a bit from the original prototype, based on lessons learned in building a second rig, and having Preston Douglas, WJ2V also build a rig. This version is more sensitive than the prototype, and is quieter, since a noise source affecting the i.f. amplifier was discovered and eliminated.