Hardrock-500 Discontinued?

[Mike Saeger]

The HobbyPCB website says the HR-500 is out of stock AND DISCONTINUED.

I have nothing but praise for this amp. I use it every day with my 5W Hermes SDR and I work all over the world.

I guess I'm glad I purchased it when I did.

N9MS

[N1IG - Anthony]

I saw that a few days ago, and was sorry to read that.  I am very lucky to have ordered one of the last two that were available.  

Anthony - N1IG

[AC1I]

I am curious, how many were delivered? Mine is SN 4.

Patrick AC1I

[jcve...@gmail.com]

I think it was a run of 25? maybe 50? It took a long time to sell them and making them a kit has been a real hassle.

Jim.

[N1IG - Anthony]

With all of the QRP rigs out there, I’m surprised that there wasn’t a bigger demand.  Especially with the Hermes Lite 2 and Square SDR radios becoming so popular.

IDK, maybe as a completed unit there would be a bigger demand.   I know that I would have bought one prebuilt.

Anthony - N1IG

[N1IG - Anthony]

Hi Mike,

are you running Pure Signal on yours?

Anthony - N1IG

On Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 9:28:25 PM UTC-4 mike....@gmail.com wrote:

[Andrew Catanzaro]

The HR-500 was a bit of a challenge for me to build and with Jim’s help getting the firmware up to date, it was a fun build.  I’ve been using it with the IC-705 interface with lots of success and fun.  I am still going to lash together the wired interface for the KX3.  I’m glad I purchased this at Dayton last year when it was available.  I had had the valuable experience of building the HR-50 and felt the bigger amp would have been a good build and it turned out that way.  I might buy an extra pair of the output transistors and one of the corollaries of Muphy’s Law is that if I set these on top of the amp, the ones inside will never fail 😊 Actually I’d like to buy these now while they are available. (Jim, are these available or should I go to DigiKey?) 

Thanks to Jim for producing this amp and for the endless e-mails he provided to get the software where it needed to be.

73,

Andy W9NJY

Milwaukee

[jcve...@gmail.com]

Hi Andy,

I'm glad you are having a good time with your amp, I usually only hear about bad times. I use mine all the time to with my RS-HFIQ and the PI SDR IQ+. We don't sell the MOSFETs separately. The price fluctuates greatly from month to month and vendor to vendor. I recommend using Octopart to find the best deal across multiple vendors. The VRF2933 is a very popular device and I don't see it going away in the near future.

73,

Jim WA2EUJ