Homebrew in Namibia — Joe Noci V51JN — — The Wizard of Sawkopmund

Here at SolderSmoke I like to highlight the homebrew adventures of far-flung radio builders. Joe V51JN melts solder in an especially exotic location: on the edge of the Namib desert. He is in a very interesting place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swakopmund

Here is Joe’s QRZ.com page: https://www.qrz.com/db/V51JN

Joe recently posted on the Amateur QRP Radio Facebook group:

I am not on the air much – here in Swakopmund ( Namibia) we have quite bad RFI from mains borne RF control signals for geysers, pumps, etc and 40M is unuseable, 30M almost usable and 20M sort of useable.. Complaint to CRAN – Our Radio Ministry – achieve nothing…So I do mobile out in the desert in the 4X4 when I can! I enjoy building radios – here are some photos – first is a 5watt 7MHz to 21MHz all band SSB rig – all homebrew, inc crystal filters, etc. PA is a push-pull LDMOS amp, 5W PEP.



Thanks to Doug KB8M for alerting me to this amazing work.

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