XIEGU X5105 HF-6M QRP TRANSCEIVER

2020-04-27 The power connector for the x5105 is a 5.5mm-2.5mm one. I got a complete cable with power pole connectors from Powerwerx. Works great. I added an inline fuse holder.

2020-01-23 I spent the last 4 hours voluntarily "confined" to my five watt X5105! What fun! Of course the ringer was contacting Bert, F6HKA in France a little while ago. I know his installation and God's blessing on propagation gets the credit but it was fun nevertheless! Good QSO's with a QRP rig and a simple antenna is satisfying in a unique way. To balance the picture a little I was unable to check into the MidCars and ECars nets with SSB on 40 meters as I wasn't patient enough to hang in there until a lull in the action. But why do that when France is waiting. The sad thing is that I continued to hear Bert calling CQ for nearly an hour with no responses. I guess everyone was doing something else other than hamming! He had a great signal.

2019-10-31 A few days ago I upgraded the firmware in my x5105 to X5105_App_V3.00_build007.xgf.  It represents a significant improvement for the radio. The CW issues seem to be completely solved. Now the radio works smooth as butter. The display now shows the S-meter, Po-meter and SWR meter simultaneously. There are more menu options as well.

One of the main improvements is the addition of an RF-gain control. Overall the upgrade is well worth the trouble. I haven't found anything that looks to me like a bug. And I've had a number of CW and SSB QSOs with the upgrade. Makes an already very good radio better!

If you are uncertain about whether to upgrade, my advice is to do it!

X5105_App_V3.00_build007.xgf firmware display.

2019-02-18 Follow-up to NOTE. MFJ promptly sent me a new x5105. Upon checking it out I discovered that the CW issue is identical to my original one. After explaining this to MFJ their engineer wrote to me indicating that there is no fix for the issue available. They are willing to send my unit to xiegu but had no idea when it might actually go to them or when I might get it back. Someone told me years ago that it is important to distinguish between problems and facts of life. Facts of life can't be "solved" but must be lived with! The x5105 CW issue is a fact of life! I have already learned how to live with it! I like the radio and will continue to use it. Case Closed! :-)

 2019-02-14 NOTE: I purchased my x5105 from MFJ in August of last year. I've been in contact with them the past few days about possibly returning the radio to Xiegu for the hardware fix that is supposedly available. They have said they will either return it or replace it. I encourage anyone who has one with the CW issue I describe below and who got it from MFJ to contact them. They are very helpful.

2019-02-13 I've now had this rig for six months and made 157 contacts with it, 137 CW and 20 SSB. Fifty three were made with my Base Station G5RV antenna. The rest were done with a variety of portable antennas.  Bands used were 80mtrs (9), 40mtrs (99 contacts), 30 mtra (10) and 20mtrs (37). Most of the CW contacts were with a straight key. Depending on the antenna I used the internal tuner (G5RV, end fed 35ft, etc.). Some were made with a resonant antenna (trap and link and fan inverted vee's, magnetic loop and  Wolf River Coils Silver Bullet 1000 TIA. I'm very pleased with almost everything about the rig.

The only thing I wish were improved were how it handles CW, particularly with a straight key. it is not a full QSK rig which is fine with me as I don't care for that most of the time. However you have to set the QSK delay to about 900 ms. The reason is that if it drops out of the transmit mode while you are keying, say during pause between words, it takes it about 80ms to be ready to transmit again and it will likely chop off about half a dit upon key down again. I've used it enough now to have gotten used to that and it is only a minor bother. But it clearly is a flaw in the design.

There are three specific things that I really like about it.

• First is the long life battery. It really is practical to take it out for a day without a backup battery. One should always be prepared but it gives many hours of operation off a fully charged battery.
  

• The second thing is the built in SWR analyzer. That makes it very easy to see what your antenna is doing and make adjustments. it will sweep up to 2.5khz either side of your set frequency (adjustable down to 1khz) and shows you graphically the SWR curve as well as the SWR at the resonant point. With that feature one would seldom need a separate antenna analyzer in the field. The other nice thing about that is once your happy, no cables to switch or anything, just transmit.
  

• Finally I like the internal antenna tuner. From my use it seems to handle a very wide range of loads. In fact I have yet to find any antenna that it won't tune. You can use or bypass it with the press of a button, making it very flexible and easy to use.
  

So, at the six month point, I'm very happy with it, especially for the price compared with any other small portable HF/6mtr rig out there. Reasonable weight. Excellent features. All modes. If/when they fix the minor CW inconvenience, it'll be "perfect!" :-)

2018-09-02 Had two more QSOs today. A SSB one on 40 and a CW one on 30. Both using my 35' end fed wire with 35' counterpoise.

It is surprisingly simple to set up and tear down using a fiberglass push up fishing pole as mast. About ten minutes each to set up and tear down. And the x5105 auto-tuner is great I'm hooked!

2018-09-01 Visiting our daughter in Clarkston, MI for the weekend. Between rain drops this afternoon I put up my stealth 40/20 meter trap inverted vee in their back yard, supporting the center with my 20' Shakespeare push up fishing pole. There were several good SSB signals on 20, one in Europe but I couldn't snag any of them with my x5105.

Switching to 40 I had a brief but solid SSB QSO with the control operator of the Nightwatch Net in Tennessee about 6pm. My wife said I sounded surprised, when we talked about it later. I told her, "I'm always surprised when I make a contact at 5 watts. That's the fun!"

The whole experience took about an hour, all standing up, as everything was soaking wet! I love this tiny "powerful" radio.

Thanks to anyone who works a QRP station. We really appreciate you!

2018-08-29 I've had problems tuning the 35 ft wire on 30 meters with most of my QRP radios and tuners, including the X5105. Also I've noticed that at least some suggest a 35 ft counterpoise. I've been using a 15 foot one. So I decided to make up and try a 35 ft counterpoise. I made it with #24 (I think) RCA speaker wire. The good news is that by X5105 transceiver's auto tuner will now tune everything from 40 through 6 meters, including 30 meters. The bands were absolutely dead this afternoon while I was playing with it so I can't comment on how it actually works. Antennas are both fun and frustrating! Almost impossible to know how they really work, particularly in this crazy propagation situation.

Using Ham Radio Deluxe software with the X5105

2018-08-28 The X5105 comes with a data (CIV) cable but I couldn't find any instructions for using that. However I did join the Xiegu X108G/X5105/G1M/G90 facebook group and read that some other guys had it working with Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) rig control software which I use on my IC-7000 and FT-817nd rigs. After reading several posts and comments someone mentioned using the IC-7000 protocol. So I tried it by Selecting Icom/IC7000 and setting the speed to auto and the port to auto in HRD's connect dialogue box. It immediately found the X5105 and seems to present all the controls as one would expect. Further, that allows HRD's logbook to enter the radio's frequency and mode directly into the log, the primary feature I use with HRD. So I'm very pleased. To use the DM780 digital portion of HRD I'll need to interface the audio to/from the computer but that shuldn't be too difficult.

New Portable QRP Go-Kit

2018-09-08  My new portable kit with the X5105 weighs just 4-3/4 lbs including my little fiberglass 17 ft. push up fishing pole mast and the mast, which straps on the side, measures 10"x10"x4-1/2 inches. The bag itself is  one that my wife found for me at a local thrift store. Thanks Honey!

The kit consists of the X5105 in an insulated sleeve I made from Reflectix insulation, the X5105 mic, my home brew CW straight key and cable, writing tablet and two pencils, my 35 ft. end fed antenna with 35' counterpoise based on the QRPGuys 40-10mtr UnUnTenna, 25' of RG174 BNC terminated coax and the 17 ft. push up mast with guy lines and tent pegs. That is everything needed to set up a portable QRP station and get on the air on all bands from 160-6 meters using CW or SSB. For another half pound I could add a 3200mah lipo battery, nearly doubling the available battery capacity.

Xeigu X5105 QRP "station" setup driving my 35 ft end fed antenna. It tunes all bands from 80 through 6 meters.

2018-08-24 This afternoon, between drizzles I put up my 35 ft. end fed antenna using the 17 ft push up fishing pole again. I ran a 25 ft piece of RG174 from the antenna inside the house and connected it directly to the X5105. My mission was to check how well it would tune the antenna on all bands in that configuration. The result? I got a less than 1.5:1 SWR on all bands from 80 through 6 meters. No fuss, no bother! Bands are pretty dead today so I didn't even try to make any contacts but I'm impressed that it tunes the antenna so readily. And the simplicity of the station is remarkable!Portable Masts

2018-08-22  About noon today my new X5105 from MFJ was delivered by Fed X. I calmly tried to finish my lunch, but gave in to the child like enthusiasm and gobbled it down! Then to the business of opening the box to see what it really looked like. I've watched tons of videos about it and read the manual on-line and even saw the one my neighbor had briefly. But that's different from putting your own money on the line and touching the resulting gadget.

Initial impressions are positive. After playing with it on my working table and getting somewhat familiar with it. I took it outside, strung up my 35 ft. end fed antenna from the 17 foot fishing pole mast, connected it to the radio with a three foot piece of RG174 and somewhat haltingly held down the tune button. It tuned 40, 30 and 20 with ease. I didn't try any other bands. There was some activity on 20 so I responded to AB5AR's CQ SKCC from Georgia and we had a QSO. He gave me a 569 and he was a solid 599 in here. That was cool!

My new X5105 set up on my bench after the first two QSOs with it!

During that QSO I realized I needed to set the CW break-in delay as it would chop off the first part of a key press if one simply breathed. I was using a straight key. The CW side-tone was also deafening! So after I brought it inside I fixed both of those. They were fairly easy to find in the manual and very easy to adjust.

With those two things fixed I connected up my G5RV, which is my main antenna, and checked tuning of it. It tuned everything except 30 meters. So need to play with that a bit more. Then I heard W3SPC calling CQ from South Carolina on 40 meters so gave him a call. He came back and gave me a 549 with QSB and he was a 579 in here. We had about a ten minute QSO when QSB began setting in and we signed.

I can see that I am going to love the built in tuner! That makes setting up and getting on the air much simpler and quicker. And a complete portable station consists of the radio, key and key cable, mic, antenna, a piece of coax, the mast and some tent pegs. I am thrilled that it tunes the 35 ft end fed which is becoming my favorite portable antenna.