Homebrew in Namibia -- Joe Noci V51JN -- -- The Wizard of Sawkopmund

 

Here at SolderSmoke I like to highlight the homebrew adventures of far-flung radio builders.  Joe V51JN melts solder in an especially exotic location:  on the edge of the Namib desert.   He is in a very interesting place:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swakopmund

Here is Joe's QRZ.com page: https://www.qrz.com/db/V51JN

Joe recently posted on the Amateur QRP Radio Facebook group: 

I am not on the air much - here in Swakopmund ( Namibia) we have quite bad RFI from mains borne RF control signals for geysers, pumps, etc and 40M is unuseable, 30M almost usable and 20M sort of useable.. Complaint to CRAN - Our Radio Ministry - achieve nothing...So I do mobile out in the desert in the 4X4 when I can! I enjoy building radios - here are some photos - first is a 5watt 7MHz to 21MHz all band SSB rig - all homebrew, inc crystal filters, etc. PA is a push-pull LDMOS amp, 5W PEP.

Thanks to Doug KB8M for alerting me to this amazing work.