It seems counter-intuitive. Why would one willingly reduce transmitting power? Especially me. I am in a remote part of the world and thus far the overwhelming majority of hams I've worked from here were using amplifiers. Many employed 300 - 400 watt machines, but at least one was using 1500 watts. From the strength of some signals I have heard, I suspect there are a couple out there pushing the 2KW mark, legal or not.

To be perfectly honest, an amplifier is on the short list of new gear to buy for my shack. I want to run with the big dogs too and at times my impatience overcomes my sense of fair play and adventure. I could wait for just the right propagation conditions and let my barefoot Icom break through a pile-up. I have been quite successful at this and am not apologetic about my logbook records.

But I spent my youth working at Doyle's Radio and TV Repair shop, my father's business started as a result of training he gained through the GI Bill after WWII. In those days it was all vacuum tube stuff. My earliest job was dismantling old radios and televisions, stripping them of parts, and inventorying the resulting supply of resistors, coils, condensers, tubes, tube sockets, transformers, and whatever else we could use to repair other sets. (Man oh man wish I had that stuff now!!)

Then, I was allowed to keep some abandoned radios, left when their owners determined it would be better to buy a new one than fix up the old Stromberg-Carlson or Hallicrafters, even an occasional Grundig. So I fixed some of them up and took them home. My room always had a half-dozen or so sets on tables and bookcases connected to long wire antennas strung through trees outside. It was the challenge of making do, fixing up, getting it to work that made the hobby a hobby.

When I decided to get my license last year, I knew I was anchored firmly in those days decades ago. I had not picked up an amateur radio magazine in nearly forty years and when I did I discovered the hobby had become sophisticated. Transceivers had all sorts of sophisticated features - scanners, digital signal processors, memory channels, automatic sideband selection, and computer interfaces.

Now I confess I eventually bought an Icom because of weight and size constraints in moving here to Uganda. I don't much care for its little buttons, but it works well and has a reputation for reliability...and I got it from a friend who also included a power supply and balanced line antenna tuner. But what I bought for my shack in the States is all vintage gear - Drake TR3 with its power supply and matching speaker, Drake VFO, Drake antenna tuner, and a Kenwood TS-820S hybrid.

Since I came here with a plug-and-play rig, I really wanted to get may hands inside a case and into the circuitry, so to speak. Homebrew is still a major and critical part of the hobby for me. But this is Africa where parts and supplies are not easy to get. I have spent two days chasing aluminum (or as they say it here - aluminium) tubing to build an antenna. THERE IS NONE TO BE HAD IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY! NONE! Whatever I wanted to build I had to have brought with me. This is where QRP comes in.

In the run-up to moving here, I downloaded and listened to a podcast called Soldersmoke which you can download without cost through I-Tunes. You can also get it through the Soldersmoke blog. Bill Meara, the podcast's producer is a QRP and homebrew guy. This got me to thinking. There are QRP kits and pieces that are quite small. If I had had more time before moving here I could have acquired parts and just brought them along. But time was quite short and a kit offers all the parts one will need making getting something else unnecessary. So I bought a Tuna Tin 2 kit from EBay along with some other stuff which I will write about soon. It is my intention to build the transmitter, add a beacon device, and set up a QRP beacon from Uganda. I absolutely guarantee you no one else has ever done this or is doing this at all. I cannot find any QRP beacons on the continent.

It's not a Hallicrafters or Stromberg-Carlson, certainly not a Grundig. But it is a way to get my hands into the working parts of a radio and bring it to life. After all, the spirit of amateur radio is that an amateur does something for the love of it. He, or she, invests time because the task itself is rewarding, the challenge worthy of his effort, and the completion of the challenge fulfilling. Sure I'll hook up an amplifier to my Icom and see whom I can work, but I intend to do the same with a microburst of power too.