ARRL.org

I'm a ham (KF5KEP) - only technician level - but am interested in building my own kit transceiver. Recommend you look at ARRL like the other guys suggested and also try Small Wonder Labs. They have a nice website with kits and I've heard good things about them.

Good luck and 73s,
MaryAnn

I built one the pixie2 units, I must say, they really don't work all that well straight out of the box. (with some major modifications, they are okay!) The receive is very broad. And sensitivity not all that great. The transmitter has a lot of harmonics, that really are hard to cleanup without eating up what little power the unit puts out. I wouldn't waste my money again. The site I've listed below has some pretty easy to build projects if you have some electronic skills. I've built a few of them myself, along with with a simple regenerative receiver, and the units operate fairly well.

I built the simple 500mw cw transmitter, and with a small amount of modifications on the emitter biasing resistor, it will put out closer to 1 watt. (maybe a little more, however this seems to load the Cristal down a bit.) I've made several contacts on this setup 500 and 600 miles away on 80M.

check it out http://www.qsl.net/wb5ude/kc6wdk/transmitter2.html

also http://www.njqrp.org/regen/ on the receiver.
The audio isn't very loud, however, the sensitivity is okay, and with an external audio amp, (or build you own) you can build this unit for next to nothing, and it works Okay I modified the receiver coil to about 17 micro H for 80- meters. This means a little bigger coil with aprox 50 turns as opposed to about 19. Or a guy could swap the tunning capacitor and achieve the same results.

My goal in building from the ground up was two fold. (1) Cheaper (2) Portable I wanted something that would operate on batteries, that I could throw into a backpack, and carry to the top of a hill somewhere and string out a wire.. Both the receiver and 500mw xmiter work well for this application.

It's kinda fun to see what you can do..

Contact me if you need to, I don't mind. rickzc@yahoo.com

Google for pixie 2 its a very small transceiver you can buy the kit for 10 bucks build it and get on the air -- of course you need your license from the fcc to be able to transmit -- its only cw and its either 40 or 80 but there are tons of mods to do just about any band -- small wounder labs makes great diy kits along with the tunatins -- its a kit in a ( fresh not used ) tuna can style container sometimes you can fin items on ebay or local craigslist -- search ebay for QRP hope this helps Chad KJ4VYI

"Ham radios" cover a VERY broad range of technology, so you'd have to be a lot more specific. Receiver only? Transmitter? Code, voice, video, or data? Handheld, mobile, or big chunk of iron? Frequency (LOTS of different frequencies are available to hams.)

Start here: ARRL - The National Association for Amateur Radio, I guess, and perhaps your local library will have their QST magazine, which is pretty interesting even if you're not much of a ham.

. American Radio Relay League