Ashhar Farhan VU2ESE has just announced that HF Signals has had to pull the plug on the bitx40 run. Ashhar said, “The sales were sparse and frankly it had become a bit of a frankenstein.”
“There were too many connectors that one could plug in the wrong place. We moved from analog VFO (that drifted due to heating of the pre-driver stage) to a raduino which wasn’t well integrated into the motherboard.”
“However, it was a big deal for us all.”
HF Signals was able to ship a full SSB transceiver for just US$50 dollars. This went over and above the ARRL challenge for a kit of parts for US$50.
It has served many well. Once you had it going, it performed pretty well. With a triple tuned front-end and the favourite ‘down conversion’ to 12 MHz IF.
Many will miss this kit. However, Sunil (at www.amateurradiokits.in) continues to ship the Bitx20 v3 kits, that can be modded to 40 meters.
Ashhar has indicated that if time permits and some in the group volunteer, we could update the original BITx with a more contemporary design while preserving the original’s bidirectional, single conversion scheme.
Ashhar suggests that “Until then, we will continue to see more scratch built bitxs, a kind of return to the roots.”