My starting point was a 2M QRP AM transceiver courtesy of G3XBM, the 'Fredbox'. The receiver is a FET super regenerative design with an RF amplifier to stop unwanted radiation, and the transmitter is a very simple series modulated PA giving <100mW. I used 2SJ310 FETs in the receiver instead of MPF102s, and 2N3904s throughout in the transmitter. Everything else came from my hoard of electronic bits. I can't claim any astounding electronic design innovations as I was following someone else's proven design with a few adaptions when it came to winding coils and a few minor tweaks to bias resistors to get the desired voltage.
The only significant difference from the G3XBM design is the lack of a crystal. Instead I'm using a Raspberry Pi as my frequency generator, running Jan Panteltje's freq_pi software. This controls the Pi SoC's clock generator, and can produce anything from the low kHz to 250MHz. Quite happy working on 70.260MHz.
So there we are. A home made transceiver costing not a lot, and for not a lot of construction time. Rather more satisfying than a twenty quid BaoFeng handheld, I think.
