After a marathon session of hacking firmware, writing documentation, fixing bugs, and setting up my Etherkit shopping cart software, I was finally able to get the OpenBeacon project to a ready-to-sell state. I had enough parts on-hand to make 10 kits, so I spent a good portion of Sunday night getting them all packaged up and ready to go. After a bit of nervous testing, I flipped the switch to the Etherkit store from “sandbox” to “live”.

Once I posted a promotional message to QRP-L and qrp-l.org, I sold all of the kits pretty quickly (within about 12 hours, I think). I wanted to post to the KnightsQRSS listserv as well, but I never did get a reply to my email to the list owner to get permission to post my message. They probably would have went quite a bit faster if I had been able to post there.

There were a few folks who missed out on the sale. I apologize for that, I wish I had more kits to sell now. I did re-invest my sales into a large batch of OpenBeacon PCBs, which should be here in about 3 weeks. There’s a small chance I might be able to sell some more before I leave for FDIM, but if not, I will have them back in stock when I return.

In the meantime, I am working on the component changes needed to get OpenBeacon on 80 meters. I also have a request for a quote on custom crystals out to a vendor, so hopefully I can start expanding the bands fairly soon. I’m looking forward to trying to adapt OpenBeacon to 500 kHz, it should be a perfect kit for the band once it’s available to us US amateurs. Stay tuned for more updates soon!

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