A couple of years ago, I bought and built the SST-20 20m QRP rig from Wilderness Radio. While I haven’t had that much success with this rig–I attribute this to my poor antenna skills–the kit went together pretty easily and was fun to build. (If anyone wants to buy this from me, you can have it for the kit price: $85)
Now, I’m thinking of trying it again. This time with one of the PSK31 rigs from Small Wonder Labs. They make several different models, including one for 10m that looks relatively easy to put together. Apparently, these rigs interface directly to a 16-bit sound card.
As for the computer, I have an old Windows box that I was thinking of converting to Linux. Another possibility is to buy an old laptop for use in the shack. The advantage of the laptop is that it would take up less space in the shack. A third option is to try to get one of the Linux PSK31 packages to run on my Sharp Zaurus. A Google search for “linux psk31” turned up quite a few references to PSK 31 software running on Linux machines.
I have a couple of questions:
- Has anyone built one of the PSK31 units? Having any success with them?
- Am I crazy for thinking about the 10m unit? Should I go with one of the other bands?
- Is anyone running PSK31 software on a Linux box? Which package do you think is best?
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