The tube transmitter uses two 117N7 tubes. It's crystal controlled so I spend most of my time calling CQ rather than "hunting and pouncing". I'm meaning to order a couple of additional crystals sooner or later. Right now I'm actually using a 3525 khz crystal with it in order to get on 40 meters. If I get an actual 40m crystal I'll get significantly more power out of the rig. It does a surprisingly good job and I've already made a lot of contacts with it.

I have used a couple of different antennas with the rig. One is a center-loaded vertical behind the house. Most of the time, though, I use 20 ft or so of wire to fashion a loop element which I then tune with my MFJ-936B loop tuner. I've had some good times operating this way and I love the loop tuner as it's easily moved from one location to another. I also like loops.

I'm really looking forward to finishing the Ten Tec kit, since it's got a VFO circuit. I thought long and hard about which kit I wanted to build and the Ten Tec ones really appeal to me. For one thing, although they're small, they're not so small that I feel I need a microscope to work on them, and there's enough room inside the chassis to make modifications down the road and add some "extras". I'm definitely going to want to install an internal keyer of some kind. I also have a "Freq mite" here that I'm not using, so I might install that as well. It could be pretty "tricked out" before I'm through.