This weekend, two of the first wave of Willamette builders posted some photos of their completed rigs to the qrp-l.org mailing list. I present to you some of these great pictures with the permission of the builders.

First up is the excellent work of Chris Howard, W0EP. Chris placed his finshed rig in a very nice Ten-Tec enclosure (very similarly to how I was planning on building mine, I might add). Here’s his description of the construction:

I put the VFO in a little box.  The VFO controls are set back from the
face of the VFO box and I have some fiberglass shaft extensions
coming through the VFO box, out to the front panel.  I was attempting
to minimize interaction with the VFO  (but my mechanical rigidity isn’t
all that great so I get a little bit of microphonics)

My faceplate isn’t lettered, so I just have some penciled-in control
captions.  From the left it’s key, phones, volume, frequency and RIT.

The little circuit board on the back, and the pushbutton on the front
are a  K1EL keyer.  I may put in some more pushbuttons eventually
to do keyer memories, etc.  I’d also like to locate a reduction drive
for the frequency control.

We also got some photos from DAve Goodrich, WB9VTB. DAve shows skills in fabrication and construction that blow away anything that I could possibly do. It’s a great feeling to see someone take something that you’ve designed and improve it to an even better state. DAve also incorporated a PA2OHH binary frequency counter into the rig, you can see it right above the tuning knob. Here’s a quick description of the photos that follow:

The VFO is below the MB and the freq display is in a separate enclosure tucked in next to the VFO enclosure on the right side of the case. The black RCA jack is for the freq display and the red RCA jack is for the VFO.

Congratulations to both Chris and DAve for jobs well done! I’m really proud to see such fine work done on the Willamette!