Announcing the ARS QRP Lab
By Russ Carpenter, AA7QU
The ARS Sojourner
The Adventure Radio Society is pleased to announce the establishment of the ARS QRP Lab. During the last six months we have been quietly putting together a full-featured lab for testing QRP HF equipment. All of the major equipment has been professionally tested and calibrated. We have been running the Lab through its paces and developing web-based presentation materials.

Our first test results will be published in the August issue of The ARS Sojourner. All test results will be archived in The Sojourner.

We want the Lab to be an important educational tool for all of us interested in low power radio. To that end, we have been working on graphically oriented presentations that we hope will be easier to read and understand than the usual tabular listings of test data.

We would also like the Lab to be responsive to the interests and expertise of the QRP community. Please pass along your comments, corrections, and recommendations with the automated ARS comments page.

Finally, we believe it is important for the Lab support the magnificent designers who have chosen low power radio as their area of concentration. We are lucky to have them. We want to operate the Lab in a collaborative, cooperative manner that encourages QRP designers to stay with the field and do even better things in the future.

The Lab will perform many of the same tests currently performed by the ARRL, so it will be possible to compare ARS’ test results with ARRL data on other pieces of equipment. In addition, we'd like to explore issues that are especially important to low power operators. Some of these include:

Weight and power consumption

Ergonomics that favor an outdoor environment.

The ability of the receiver to copy weak signals in an environment of strong interfering signals.

Receiver phase noise and spurious products (especially important as more QRP rigs are designed with digital circuits).

Features that add to the pleasure of CW operating, such as excellent audio, spotting, superior QSK, and clean keying.

Here is a summary of equipment currently in the Lab:

Two HP 8640B signal generators

Tektronix TDS 380 oscilloscope, coupled with HP printer (400 MHz bandwidth, hard copy and diskette data output, with fast Fourier transforms, used to assess signals in both the time and frequency domains)

HP 3400A true RMS AF voltmeter

SSB Electronics PM 1300A RF power meter, DC to 1.5 gHz, 20 mW to 20W

HP 334A Distortion Analyzer

Two Tenma calibrated audio generators

QRP Plus transceiver

Calibrated noise source (William Sabin design)

Narda and Pasternak step attentuators

Mini-Circuits hybrid combiner

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Russ Carpenter, AA7QU