If you’re a member of the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) you may have seen my review of the ALT-512 QRP transceiver in the March 2020 issue of Radcom. This was my first review for Radcom after having been invited to submit a review at the 2018 Hamvention.

I love Radcom so was pretty chuffed to see my review in the March pages:

I had the ALT-512 here at SWLing Post HQ, on loan from the manufacturer, for the better part of six months. I got to know this little radio inside-out. I’ve operated it in the field, in the shack and covered ever mode including FT-8 contacts during portable operations and even in a high school classroom.

Operating FT-8 with my ham radio class high school students last year. The ALT-512 is a digi-mode champ. With a very modest indoor mag loop antenna we averaged about 110 miles per watt.

The ALT-512 is a versatile, sturdy little rig–designed and manufactured in Bulgaria. I really only had minor complaints about this transceiver. I saw a bright future for this little rig. It was well-designed and backed by a company and team of ham radio operators that had already successfully launched several other transceivers.

Then the unexpected happened…

Early last month, I learned that the ALT-512’s main engineer and designer, Dobri Hristov (LZ2TU), passed away.

If you own the Sky SDR or LD-11, you may have communicated with Dobri at some point when you needed technical support.  Dobri was a well-respected fellow and distinguished ham radio operator/DXer. I corresponded with him quite a few times in the past.

Sadly, when Dobri passed away, he took the ALT-512 with him.

Here’s the announcement from Aerial-51’s website.

I think the ALT-512 would have been very successful and competitive in the European market and beyond.

Dobri passed away as the March 2020 issue of Radcom was being printed. He never got to see it, but I’d like to think he would have been quite proud of his little transceiver. In the end, I think it was an overall positive review.

You can judge for yourself: Aerial-51 recently published a copy of the ALT-512 review with permission from the RSGB.

Radcom

If you’re into ham radio and are looking for a top-shelf publication, consider joining the RSGB and subscribing to Radcom. I highly recommend them even though their judgement was obviously impaired when they invited me to write a review–! 🙂