The RockMite

The RockMite is a simple and very cheap crystal controlled CW transceiver kit, available from SmallWonderLabs. It is of the direct conversion type and draws no more than 30 mA on receive. It has a built in morse electronic keyer, and delivers approximately 500 milli Watts of RFouput.

This is a couple of pictures of my finished rig. It took about three hours to build, including the work done to make the enclosure. The box, button, connectors and other things were just stuff I had lying around. The box is fairly large compared to the transceiver board, so there's plenty of room for batteries etc. I measured the output of mine to 600 mW, and the first QSO I had on it was with SM6CZU in Boraas. Continued with QSO's with Germany, Denmark, England and Russia. They all gave me good reports, one actually gave me a true 599.



The board, half finished to the left. It was very simple to build, and the board itself took only 2 hours to complete. I even managed to use the wrong capacitor in one place, and destroyed it while trying to desolder it. Luckily I had a similar cap in my junk box.








 To the right the backside of the finished board.

 The finished board. Quite nice if I might say.

To the left you can see the board with all the wires connected and ready for testing. The other two pictures show the inside of the box, and as you can see there is plenty of room for other things such as batteries or more rockmites... I also fitted a small speaker inside, to be able to listen without earphones. The audio is a bit low, but still very much there.