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(tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 18 Feb 2022, 10:58
by DL2MAN
Hey Guys,

exiting News !
The chinese Company "Shenzen qiuhai import and export co LTD" got in contact with us and asked how they could become official supplier. We pointed out, that all that´s required is: Sending us a Kit or Rig in the same quality they are going to sell and we´ll test it, and give approval or not.

Long story short: They sent us a Kit and the supplied quality exeeded our expectations.

So we now have the first official approved Supplier for (tr)uSDX.
Company Name: "Shenzen qiuhai import and export co LTD"
Tech Person in Charge "Hison Chen"
Sales Person in Charge: "Sunny Yang"
AliExpress Store; "Up Tech Store"
ebay Store: "uellyqh store"

Links to the offers:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/134028102407
and
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005003908457475.html

Video of Unboxing, Building and measurement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLCFsNNDZUg

73 Manuel; Dl2MAN

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 19 Feb 2022, 09:10
by John
Excellent! I immediately bought one of the kits. It looks like it will take about 3 weeks to arrive in the USA from China. I'm an experienced tech, a proficient solderer, and have commercial grade test equipment, 'scopes, spectrum analyzers, freq counters, network analyzers, FM deviation meters, etc. So I'll build the rig as soon as it arrives, check it out, then let you know of my experience. It's the most excited I've been to build a kit in years.

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 19 Feb 2022, 17:23
by N6ALT
I ordered one as well, I got the complete kit with case.

Joel
N6ALT

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 19 Feb 2022, 17:33
by N6ALT
And just like that, they are sold out!

Joel
N6ALT

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 19 Feb 2022, 18:55
by DL2MAN
On ALiExpress still available. I assume the fees on eBay were too high for them....

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 19 Feb 2022, 20:31
by CX1GU
Hi everyone.. I buy one minutes ago.. So, any personal experience will be shared.. 73 CX1GU

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 24 Feb 2022, 17:30
by ea3hoq
From this Chinese seller there is a video of the kit to assemble

Is this seller's assembled equipment working properly and of good quality?

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 24 Feb 2022, 19:59
by DL2MAN
I didn´t test that, as it is not yet available.
But I assume at this moment, as it really seems that they know what they are doing.
And everytime they have questions, they immediately contact us. So I assume it will be good.

73 Manuel, DL2MAN

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 25 Feb 2022, 05:09
by ea3hoq
There are many of us who want to have the trusdx but we are unable to mount it :-(

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 28 Feb 2022, 20:02
by VE3 VWG
I was very excited to find out that a(tr)uSDX was available to purchase on line. I went on Aliexpress web site and purchased a completed version of the (tr)uSDX including shipping to Canada for $172.61CDN. Now I find out that Aliexpress has not record of my transaction but has debited my credit card for $172.61. Visa can do nothing because I did not receive and order number or confirmation code. Aliexpress do not answer emails or Facebook messages and have no customer contact number. I have contacted Visa Fraud department to no avail! Watch out for scammers. This has certainly tainted my experience with the (tr)uSDX. I am cancelling my Canadian order and spending my money elsewhere. VE3 VWG

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 01 Mar 2022, 00:22
by Faraaz VK4JJ
VE3 VWG wrote: 28 Feb 2022, 20:02 I was very excited to find out that a(tr)uSDX was available to purchase on line. I went on Aliexpress web site and purchased a completed version of the (tr)uSDX including shipping to Canada for $172.61CDN. Now I find out that Aliexpress has not record of my transaction but has debited my credit card for $172.61. Visa can do nothing because I did not receive and order number or confirmation code. Aliexpress do not answer emails or Facebook messages and have no customer contact number. I have contacted Visa Fraud department to no avail! Watch out for scammers. This has certainly tainted my experience with the (tr)uSDX. I am cancelling my Canadian order and spending my money elsewhere. VE3 VWG
Meh, Aliexpress is very reputable. I have ordered hundreds and hundreds of items from them without problem and find their refund process extremely reliable. They are certainly not scammers - 150 million customers worlwide with a trillion dollars worth of goods sold in 2020 makes the platform bigger than eBay. I'm certain you will get your money back. Check your spam email folders for order confirmation.

Either way - it is not a problem with the (tr)uSDX project.

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 08 Mar 2022, 19:24
by W4OP
Mine will be here today. Does anyone know if the Bootloader and/or software are already loaded?

Tnx,
Dale W4OP

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 09 Mar 2022, 17:37
by N6ALT
Well Dale,

It looks like you are going to be the one to answer this question yourself. Did it come with the boot loader? I'm still waiting for mine to get here. They were all out of the option 1 kits when I ordered mine so I had to take the completed radio, (option 2), so I'm wondering if it is coming with the boot loader and possibly the firmware loaded also, no doubt I will have to answer my own question also.

Joel
N6ALT

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 10 Mar 2022, 23:04
by W4OP
I believe you are correct Joel. I did receive a repsonse from the vendor- which was of no help as it directed me to the pages regarding loading Bootloader and firmware. Maybe that means neither programs reside in the radio.
It will take me a while to machine my enclosure and awaiting on Switchcraft parts to replace the jacks/sockets that came with the radio and a larger 32 Ohm speaker.
Looking forward to finishing up this fun prject though.

Dale W4OP

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 16 Mar 2022, 18:21
by Matěj OK2MTB
I am using the automatic translator DeepL to translate this post, I hope it will be understandable :) .

My Chinese (tr)uSDX from a vendor approved by Manuel arrived a few days ago and I assembled it yesterday. I can therefore share this experience:

- I wrote my callsign to the seller in the order note and the radio arrived with the firmware already uploaded. The firmware is version 2.0f.
- After assembling, the radio transmitted only 0.5W when powered from an 11V power supply and 0.01W when powered from USB.
It turned out that this was due to one of the BS170s being faulty. Of course it was only the last one that I desoldered, I didn't expect anything else :). I soldered the two working BS170s back and added one new one, but the problem persisted. Further investigation showed that the two originally working BS170s had also died during soldering. Odd. So finally I replaced all 3 transistors and the transceiver started transmitting.
- I'm a little doubtful about the origin of the toroids. The red paint on the T37-2 included in the kit has a slightly different shade on some pieces. However, I was able to achieve an efficiency of around 82% on all bands. On the 80m band, this required considerable compression of the wire turns on the toroids. There were two extra pieces of T37-2 in the kit.
- The transceiver now seems to transmit correctly even in LSB, but the receiver is completely unusable. The S level jumps up and down even up to S0 and sometimes shows the number "25" and rather than receiving, it makes all sorts of annoying intermittent noises with only hints of reception. At the moment I don't know if it's a HW or SW problem, but it seems that pressing the buttons changes the character of the sound.
Of course, I can't rule out that I made some mistake in the build, but I've built Manuel's 5-band Sandwich from scratch before and it works flawlessly. Some of the solder joints from the Chinese manufacturer look dodgy, I'll try re-soldering them and also try uploading new firmware.
I'll let you know if that helped.

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 16 Mar 2022, 21:48
by wa2t
Matěj OK2MTB wrote: 16 Mar 2022, 18:21
- I'm a little doubtful about the origin of the toroids. The red paint on the T37-2 included in the kit has a slightly different shade on some pieces. However, I was able to achieve an efficiency of around 82% on all bands. On the 80m band, this required considerable compression of the wire turns on the toroids. There were two extra pieces of T37-2 in the kit.
Hi,

FWIW, I bought 1/2 of the toroids for my build of 5 units from china and they were no good at all. The paint on these is brighter red than the deep red of the Amidon origin toroids. They also are consistently low in inductance and are lossy, measured on a VNA they do not follow the edge of the Smith chart but rather show varying inductance with frequency and some real resistance (not from the wire), lossy.

In short, the toroids I am referencing are complete garbage! https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33007214196.html

73,

Robert, WA2T

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 19 Mar 2022, 21:42
by DL2MAN
I had the very same opinion about chinese Toroids before, until I received the sample of the approved chinese Seller.
Those Toroids were outstanding in peformance. They worked immediately with the amount of turns from schematic with very high efficiency and I needed almost no tweaking.
So I asked them what it was, and they told me: Material was imported, the Toroids were made in China.
They did a really good job in selecting the good stuff.

@Matej:
I assume there´s some cold solder joint or bad inter PCB Connection.
Usual Suspects are the Ground sides of the SWR Transformers, The SMA Connector and the Power connector. They need a lot of heat to really bond.
If all those are fine, check the FST3253 for bad solder joints and the capacitors around it.

73 Manuel; DL2MAN

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 19 Mar 2022, 21:46
by DL2MAN
W4OP wrote: 08 Mar 2022, 19:24 Mine will be here today. Does anyone know if the Bootloader and/or software are already loaded?

Tnx,
Dale W4OP
THey said, they would send it with bootloader. Please tell me if they did. If not I will remind them ;)

73 Manuel; DL2MAN

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 20 Mar 2022, 02:47
by CX1GU
Hello everyone. After assembling this kit I have had problems with the 14 pin connector, and after fixing it my RF output is very low.
My measurement in Gate of the bs170 is 3.1v of rf, and in drain it drops to 2.4v... will the bs170 be dead? or have I rigged in some configuration? Reception and other things seem to be fine. Greetings and I thank someone who has made voltage measurements, I appreciate it.

73, Gonzalo CX1GU

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 21 Mar 2022, 09:19
by DL2MAN
Please check Drain Inductor for continuity.
On Fet´s Drain should be DC Voltage all the Time, and when TXíng you see Spikes up to 50V.

73 Manuel; DL2MAN

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 21 Mar 2022, 17:58
by CX1GU
Thanks for the reply Manuel. I have measured what you say. There is continuity and permanent voltage in the choke. In TX it goes from 11.98v to 12.34v. Another thing... in TX in drain, the RF voltage varies according to the band and in the output of the SMA it drops to half or a little less! The reading on the OLED says around 13W and SWR 1.0 with dummy load.
Things I'll try if I don't have to change the bs170s with these data: winding the choke more carefully, and plastic isolated 1 turn of the transformers.

Thank you very much and appreciate all the ideas.

73 Gonzalo CX1GU

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 29 Mar 2022, 19:37
by AC9YY
I ordered one of the built radios from the eBay vendor and all works as it should. The power and efficiency are all where they should be. It came with 2.00f and they got my call sign off by one character, but I reloaded 2.00h with my callsign and all is good. Last Friday I made a 4,800+ mile SSB QSO with a gentleman in Bosnia using my OCFD. Only setting I changed were NR to 2, lowered the reference frequency and changed the volume to 12.

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 31 Mar 2022, 06:09
by s56al
DL2MAN wrote: 19 Mar 2022, 21:46 THey said, they would send it with bootloader. Please tell me if they did. If not I will remind them ;)
Just assembled the 2nd (tr)uSDX transceiver from a KIT ordered from Aliexpress about a month ago and I can confirm that the microcontrollers have arrived in both KITs with the bootloader preinstalled. I didn't specify anything like the callsign at the time of ordering, therefore I had to prepare and upload the firmware myself. An easy job though thank's to informative and well prepared instructions @ the (tr)uSDX website.

The achieved TX output power is beteen 5 and 6 W @ 12 V supply voltage, varies slightly from band to band. It only happened that (without additional alignment) the 40m band filter, at least in my case, seems to be "shifted down" a bit. A full 6W TX power achieved @ 6,9 MHz and drops to slightly below 4 W @ 7,2 MHz. Other band filters appear to be very well tuned, requiring no additional alignment and ensuring full Pout >= 5 W throughout the HAM bands.

I am also impressed with the accuracy of the output power measurement. Checked with the HP-8920A RF communicartion analyser, the accuracy of measured and displayed TX output power seems to be within few percent on all bands.

Thanks for the great work done!

Re: (tr)uSDX now officially available from China

Posted: 06 Apr 2022, 08:17
by Matěj OK2MTB
Matěj OK2MTB wrote: 16 Mar 2022, 18:21My Chinese (tr)uSDX from a vendor approved by Manuel arrived a few days ago and I assembled it yesterday. I can therefore share this experience:
...
- The transceiver now seems to transmit correctly even in LSB, but the receiver is completely unusable. The S level jumps up and down even up to S0 and sometimes shows the number "25" and rather than receiving, it makes all sorts of annoying intermittent noises with only hints of reception. At the moment I don't know if it's a HW or SW problem, but it seems that pressing the buttons changes the character of the sound.
...
A few weeks have passed and the problem is solved. The seller "Up Tech Store" provided absolutely great support.
Seller evaluated the glitch symptoms I described as probably caused by a faulty LT6231 op amp (U9), but sent me a whole new mainboard just in case AND an extra LT6231, both free of charge.
And he was right, replacing the LT6231 did indeed fix the problem.

That said, I rate the support provided by the seller as absolutely phenomenal and I applaud his high level of professionalism.
I now feel bad for him because I ended up with one extra mainboard I didn't have to pay for.