Texas TopperPrice: $35.00 |
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The TEXAS Topper and TUNA Topper kits will boost your 40m QRP or QRPp signal to a full 5 watts.
The Texas Topper kit features an the round tuna tin sized board that can easily be turned into an Altoids/Rockmite sized rectangular board. All PCB mounted parts are included: transistors, capacitors, resistors, toroids and magnet wire. The Texas Topper kit DOES NOT INCLUDE A TUNA CAN OR BC-1 ENCLOSURE (as pictured) like the Tuna Topper. Build the TEXAS Topper in the enclosure of your choice.
A special version of the Texas Topper is kitted to accompany QRPme*s Rockmite][ transceiver kit. The Rock Topper amp is a specially kitted version which includes a custom enclosure and special band module parts allowing the Rock Topper to fit inside the matching low profile enclosure.
HISTORY:
My friend and Elmer Chuck Carpenter, W5USJ, designed a 5 watt RF amplifier to take his original Rockmite transceiver to a full 5 watts. He called it a Texas topper.
He allowed me to turn his design into a tuna can kit that I sell on my QRPme site as the Tuna Tunah amplifier kit. One of the unique features of the Tuna Tunah pcb was that the core amplifier circuit was laid out in a rectangular area in the center of the pcb.The area was the exact same footprint as the Rockmite pcb and outlined with v-scores.
So the amp circuit can be used as is on a tuna can or snapped on the v-scores to make an amp with the same footprint as the Rockmite.
Both formats are offered on the QRPme website as the Tuna Topper and Texas Topper kits. QRPme also offered powder coated, machined and engraved enclosures for both kits until our QRP friendly machinist retired. In my extensive search for a alternative enclosure, I recently found a source for affordable and cool enclosures BUT: the enclosures require specific sized pcbs to fit inside the included slots. So new pcbs had to designed to use the NEW enclosures. Since I had to lay out a new pcb and it was indeed larger than to original Rockmite footprint, I now had the opportunity to replace all those wired external connectors, switches etc with pcb mounted parts. The new Rockmite][++ and RockTopper][++ kits have all the connectors, switches, LED etc mounted directly on the pcb so they are much easire to build.
In the case of the Rockmite][++, since I was going to lay out a new pcb, I decided to make some changes that I have wanted to incorporate for many years! Like many of my tuna can kits, the Rockmite][++ now has band modules so the basic kit is no longer a monobander. The RockTopper had a band module from the beginning but the new band module is different.
IMPORTANT:
The circuits for both Rockmite][++ & RockTopper][++ are exactly the same. Only the component selection and placement has changed.The Rockmite][++ has new connectors for the new band modules and all the band specific parts are relocated to the 2 band modules. The RockTopper][++ has the exact same components including the band module parts. Again, all the input/output connections have been changed to pcb mounted parts.
Unfortunately, the original documentation for the Tuna/Texas Topper kit was written by Chuck Carpenter, W5USJ, who is now a silent key. It was written using a very esoteric documentation system that he inherited from his professional documentation dsys at Xerox. I have the original file but nothing to edit it with. Another issue is that Chuck created the last document in a cover everything style so it is kinda confusing as to what to do when due to all the options covered. I will try to create a couple of new simplified guides for the newest ][++ versions of the kits.
Documentation