Statistics are showing that there is a lot of traffic steadily hitting the kit building pages. Among Ham Radio operators, kit building is definitely on the rise again! As anyone who has built a kit knows, Ham Radio kit building brings a sense of accomplishment and personal satisfaction.

Imagine purchasing a kit, cobbling the parts together and sending out a CQ! When you hear another station coming back to you, it has to be a thrill. QRP or low power (5 watts or less) is a rather amazing and sometimes challenging way to work local and DX stations. But hey, we all live for the challenge, don’t we?

After building my first QRP kit (NORCAL 40) somewhere around 1985, I was hooked. One day, I brought that first kit over to a friend’s house and connected it to his Cushcraft A4S with the 40 meter add-on kit. We were both laughing hard each time I got a 599+ signal report from a stateside station. There’s nothing like a beam antenna to build up some ERP.

QRP continues to fun and challenging today. My latest Ham Radio kit is the Elecraft KX3. Now this kit requires no soldering; it’s designed as a modular kit which takes about 2.5 hours to put together. The end result is a truly amazing piece of Ham Radio gear. If you are not familiar with the KX3, take a spin over to the Elecraft site (see below). I am sure you will be rather surprised at its huge list of features.

There are a number of great sites to visit to find Ham Radio Kits. Here are a few to get your electrons flowing!

CanaKit  Canada – High quality electronic kits & modules
Carl’s Electronics  electronic kits, robotic kits, test equipment & more
Communication Concepts  HF/VHF/UHF amps, LP filters, broadband RF transformers
Crystal Radio Kits and Parts
Elecraft  Innovative Electronic  Kits
EMTECH  QRP kits and more
Etherkit  Devoted to open source hardware
Fox Delta Amateur Radio Projects & Kits  Excellent website by Dinesh, VU2FD
Hendricks QRP Kits
NorCal 40A  by Wilderness Radio
Oak Hills Research
Ramsey Kits – Headquarters
Small Wonder Kits (NN1G)
Ten-Tec  Worldwide reputation for excellent radios and kits
The ‘Rock-Mite’  Simple CW transceiver for 40 or 20 meters
YouKits Technology  Quality, well designed kits … check them out!

Which kits have you built? Do you work QRP? Why not tell us about your experiences!