BrainOut!
The mumblings of a Christian autistic husband, dad, IT guy and amateur radio operator - Will Brokenbourgh / AF7EC
Venus SW-3B QRP 3-Band HF Transceiver
The SW-3B QRP CW HF transceiver
Welcome to my first new post on willbrokenbourgh.com!
Right off the bat, let me say how much of an under-appreciated gem the SW-3B is! In a vast sea of cheap and underwhelming Chinese QRP transceivers, the SW-3B is one of the few pleasant exceptions.
The SW-3B QRP HF transceiver
At the very beginning of 2022, I was starting my covid recovery time. The house we had moved into at the time was relatively small and did not offer room for a dedicated electronics experimentation work area. I was becoming interested in portable operations such as POTA and similar things and wanted something that would be light-weight, have more than just one band and use as little power as possible. My uBitX v6 was just not cutting the mustard and wasn't really the best choice for portable ops anyway.
I did much research, looking at many videos and reviews at various places, such as qrper.com, "the 'zed", eham.net and other places. I did searches on eBay, Gigaparts, R & L and so-on and started to narrow things down. I was considering QRP Labs QCX-mini but wanted more than just one band (the QMX had not been announced yet). I even looked on MFJ's site, but at the time there just wasn't anything that filled the bill at a reasonable price.
What's interesting is that some of the best results in web and video searches are actually very far from the first page. I started to see mention of the SW-3B buried among the videos and search results for cheap uSDX knock-offs, (tr)uSDX and Chinese Pixies. I watched a few videos where people were having great QRP QSOs all around the world with their SW-3B and was swayed -- I went ahead and ordered one.
Not a criticism of the SW-3B's maker at all but the time between ordering the SW-3B and receiving it was longer than usual. Apparently I ordered during a long Chinese holiday, so I had to wait for that to be finished before my order was processed and shipped. I also was worried about receiving something fishy instead of a radio so I was a bit nervous before my SW-3B actually arrived.
After receiving my shipment from China and actually seeing and handling the radio, it was much smaller than I anticipated. When you see something online and in videos, sometimes you just don't get an accurate idea of its actual size. I felt the same in my recent Xiegu G106 post. The SW-3B is just a bit larger than a deck of (large) cards. This is great for portable ops because you're not lugging around a big bulky radio but sometimes it being light-weight is frustrating because heavy coax can drag it out of place -- overall though -- not even close to a deal-breaker for me.
The SW-3B QRP HF transceiver
For the longest time I did not transmit with the SW-3B because I did not have a suitable antenna. After getting a random-wire antenna up almost a year after receiving the SW-3B, I was finally able to get on the air. The results were 'okay' but it didn't take long to see that the unun I made for my random-wire antenna was probably not ideal. After more months went by, I built the portable paint pole antenna and got much better results.
Initial SW-3B and paint-pole antenna results
There's just something about the SW-3B that makes me reach for it first before my other radios. I think the biggest factor is how easy it is to deploy, how it sips power (I can run it off of three 18650 batteries for days), I can send CQ for twenty minutes straight and it doesn't even get warm and so much more. It may not look fancy on the outside, but it easily outperforms my uBitX v6 and uses way less power on receive than the Xiegu G106.
The SW-3B QRP HF transceiver
The SW-3B QRP HF transceiver
- Uses very little power on receive
- Doesn't break a sweat when transmitting for long periods
- Small, easily packable
- Relatively rugged and robust
- Has separate VFO, volume and RF gain knobs (very important to me)
- Doesn't have noticeable birdies / spurs
- Doesn't transmit out-of-band -- great for CW practice / key testing
- Is so light that stiff or large cables tend to pull radio out of place
- Power-on mode always defaults to memory mode instead of last mode
- Radio sometimes randomly resets unnoticed during transmit, often putting it on a wildly different frequency
- (minor) CW keying memory is a little limited
- Doesn't have full-color 4-inch screen, waterfall, Bluetooth, 1,000 lumen flashlight / torch and
GPS receiver (I'm *totally* being silly with this one)
The SW-3B QRP HF transceiver
I've noticed that the successor to the SW-3B, the SW-3C, has been discontinued while the SW-3B still seems to be sold. I briefly considered the SW-3C but ultimately chose the SW-3B because of its form-factor. Maybe the SW-3C just wasn't popular enough to continue making? At any rate, I have absolutely zero buyer's remorse in regards to the SW-3B. For what it is, it does its job well and can be a reliable go-to portable rig for many needs.
God bless you, and thank you for reading!
About me
First and foremost I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. After that, I'm a blessed husband,
father and grandfather. I do remote computer work for a living although it's mostly
part-time. I'm an amateur radio operator - AF7EC. When I'm not working on the endless
list of house and car projects, I like to tinker with electronics, like to listen to
shortwave radio and write software (mostly open-source) in C, C++, Python and Free
Pascal. I usually run Linux as my main operating system but sometimes I'm forced to
endure macOS and Windows 11 for gaming with my son or testing software. Overall, I am
a big nobody, but always willing to share about Jesus and all that God has done for me
and my family.
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