Oh my giddy aunt!
I just learned–via AE5X’s excellent blog–that Manuel DL2MAN and Guido’s PE1NNZ fork of the uSDX series of transceivers is now for sale in both kit form and fully assembled (projected in March/April) via the Romanian retailer/manufacturer roWaves.
Of course, it hit the web and everything is already sold out. John snagged a second production run one, though!
As John makes clear, this is not the Chinese uSDX version (that I recently sent back to the retailer due to its numerous issues). It’s a complete kit version of the uSDX sandwich transceiver.
I would encourage you to check out AE5X’s post for more details.
My oh my, we live in exciting times! I have been hoping that someone out there would kit up the original uSDX sandwich for all to enjoy!
I clicked on the post, and it took me to a Discord site. I would like to get involved in the next group buy, but not sure how to proceed? This would be perfect for backpacking and SOTA/POTA.
Scott
KN3A
Hi, Scott,
Where did you find the Discord site? Was it on roWaves? There’s no “buy” button on there now because they’ve completely sold out.
Cheers,
Thomas
The site was down for a while, but it´s back online now.
Thanks for the hint, Thomas, a most interesting project.
vy73
Harald DL1AX
Absolutely awesome project! I just left a video call with a bunch of OMs in Germany who organized a group buy (cheaper than commercial options but requires one person to organize it) so in a few weeks we should have everything: PCBs with SMDs pre-soldered (except 3 pcs. which were not in stock at the pcb company and which have to be done by hand) and the rest in a regular kit fashion for self-building. Apparently the firmware has really been improved in contrast to the uSDX. The live demo in the video call looked very promising.
Looking forward to see what this tiny box can do!
– 73s de Leo (DL2COM)
Here is the discord site: https://discord.gg/hh3SqgGt
This is for the US Buy group.
Amazing radio from what I read.
73
wb8yxf
These radios seem too good to be true and for most of the Chinese versions, it is too god to be true.
I’ll be waiting a year or so to see how this shakes out and avoid the feeding frenzy and hype that accompanies these new rigs. If it’s still alive then I’ll investigate it.
FYI for those who might be getting a little lost. Development had started on groups.io (https://groups.io/g/ucx) and several other people continue to work on home-brew variation there. Lot’s of history about the radio over there, but Manuel moved this final “sandwich” design to is own forum (https://forum.dl2man.de) for troubleshooting and group buys. There are a bunch of group buys operating there right now for various regions, and niche groups like “board only” buys, but the “US Group buy” decided to create their own discord instead of using the forum (https://discord.gg/hh3SqgGt). So if you are in America, you will probably end up there as well.
All of the above is non-commercial hobbyist, development and operations, so that’s not as slick of an experience as hopefully that commercial storefront will be when they get stock. You have to do a bit of browsing to get your feet on the ground.
There are now approved vendors, however there are currently efficiency issues with he ROWaves kits that are being investigated. I already built a kit from a group buy and a have a built unit from the eBay vendor that both work great! I already made a QSO to Bosnia using an OCFD and the (tr)uSDX, over 4,800 miles from me.
https://dl2man.de/where-to-buy-trusdx/