QRP Labs
| QRP Labs | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2010 |
| Founder | Hans Summers, G0UPL |
| Headquarters | Turkey |
| Known for | Low-cost transceiver and beacon kits, including the QCX series, QDX and QMX |
| Status | Active |
| Website | qrp-labs.com |
QRP Labs is a small company that designs and sells electronic kits for low-power amateur radio, founded and run by Hans Summers, G0UPL. It began with kits for slow, weak-signal beacon modes and is now best known for inexpensive QRP transceiver kits, notably the QCX series for CW, the QDX for digital modes and the multimode QMX. The kits have been built in large numbers: by 2023 about 20,000 QCX-series transceivers alone had been sold. The main transceiver kits are also offered factory-assembled for those who would rather not build.
History
In May 2010 Summers gave a talk on QRSS, a very slow form of CW used for weak-signal experiments, at the Four Days in May (FDIM) QRP gathering held alongside the Dayton Hamvention. He and his friend Steve, G0XAR, produced a QRSS kit to go with the talk, starting with a batch of 100. Steve handled production while Summers did the design, firmware, documentation and support. Later beacon kits in the Ultimate series added WSPR, and Summers describes the first of them as the first product to generate WSPR on its own, without a computer.
At the end of 2012 the two partners amicably went separate ways, and a few months later Summers relaunched QRP Labs on his own with the Ultimate2 kit. The Ultimate3 and, in 2015, the Ultimate3S followed. In 2016 Summers left a 22-year career in investment-bank information technology to work on QRP Labs full time.
The QCX, a 5-watt single-band CW transceiver kit, first appeared in limited numbers at the 2017 Youngsters on the Air (YOTA) summer camp. Demand for it grew so quickly that Summers moved the business's operations from Japan to Turkey, where it is now based. Summers was inducted into the QRP Amateur Radio Club International (QRP-ARCI) Hall of Fame in 2009, the year before QRP Labs began.
Products
| Kit | Introduced | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Ultimate3S | 2015 | Multiband beacon transmitter for WSPR and other weak-signal modes |
| QCX, QCX+, QCX-mini | 2017–2020 | 5-watt single-band CW transceivers |
| QDX | 2021 | Multiband transceiver for single-tone digital modes such as FT8 |
| QMX | 2023 | Multiband CW, digital and SSB transceiver |
| QMX+ | 2024 | QMX design covering 160 through 6 meters |
The QCX family are complete single-band CW transceivers; the QCX+ is a larger two-board redesign of the original, and the QCX-mini, launched in December 2020, is a compact version. The QDX, released in October 2021, transmits a single clean tone and is meant for modes such as FT8, WSPR and JS8Call; by 2023 it had become the company's best-selling kit. The QMX combines the small QCX-mini case with QDX-style electronics and adds CW and, from a firmware update in 2025, SSB. It has a built-in USB sound card and computer control port, so one USB cable replaces a separate digital mode interface, and its receiver uses software-defined radio techniques.
QRP Labs also sells GPS modules and small tracker boards for high-altitude balloons, which report their position over the air by WSPR or APRS. A few earlier designs, such as the QSX HF transceiver, have been retired.