My TruSDX Kit

[KG7YSX]

Here are some photos of my TruSDX kit. In the summers I work wildland fire medical and my use case for this kit is reaching winlink gateways when I'm assigned to a spike camp without cell service. I am testing it today and have been reaching gateways and JS8 stations over 800 km away. The 18650 battery pack has powered the transceiver for over 10 hours now, even with a lot of transmission. I am very impressed with the TruSDX and this tiny little antenna. The few quirks with the operation of the TruSDX are entirely offset by its affordability and orange color.

[KG7YSX]

The three 18650 batteries in the attached battery pack lasted over 18 hours with a lot of transmission, before I had to fall asleep. By the end, the TruSDX said it was only outputting ~3.5w. This was still enough to reach a winlink gateway over 800mi/1300km away. This was despite the 999 message indicating I'm overdriving (I can't seem to find better tuning), and despite the stumpy whip antenna sucked onto a chair in the photo.

[Constrainted]

Looks great! No match tuner?

73 Constrainted

[Karavan]

A great set!
How did such an antenna perform on SSB?

[KG7YSX]

Looks great! No match tuner?

73 Constrainted

No tuner. I threw a nanovna in the kit so I could adjust the antenna whip and counterpoise for resonance. Just takes a bit of tweaking. The only downside to this has been that I've noticed the resonant freq changes as the snow melts, or cars move about the parking lot. I just make sure to check thr swr every few hours.

One quick way to check without having to reconnect the nanovna is to just flip over to CW and hit ptt, since the Trusdx will show swr in cw mode.

[KG7YSX]

A great set!
How did such an antenna perform on SSB?

It blew my mind. Location is important; it definitely doesn't like being around a lot of power lines and metal roofs, but I was able to make some insanely long distance USB digital contacts just with this humble little setup. It will cross the continent on JS8 at the right time of day, and I think my longest Winlink gateway hookup was like 1000 miles away in Southern California.