K8LD Qrp Radio

And now for something completely different: below is a picture of one of my favorite rigs, the Tentec Century 22. This is a 20 watt, CW only rig that is a joy to operate. I had two of these rigs back in the late eighties then sold and traded them only to regret doing so. For the last dozen years or so I was on the look out for a used one. Tentec only made about 700 of these rigs.

This rig has a direct conversion receiver as opposed to the normal super-hetrodyne design. As a result you receive both sidebands and you need to offset your signal about 700Hz on either side to be able to be heard. It's trickly but the radio has the typical Tentec smooth keying circuitry which makes sending code a joy. I just picked up this rig and will make a few modifications to it. It presently has an analog cord-driven dial pointer. I will add a digital readout which will make keeping track of the frequency much easier. After all, over a period of years the dial cord stretches and makes finding the frequency a challenge.