I purchased a used HB-1B Four Band CW QRP Quad-Band transceiver in December of 2013. It was in mint condition.

Today I finally got to spend some time with the little rig. I was trying to figure out how to switch between the internal speaker and the headphones.

The distributor of the HB-1B, Ten-Tech has a video of the HB-1B on YouTube where they run through all the features of the magnificent radio. The video is embedded below and you can clearly hear audio emanating from the radio at 4:09 in the video. I urge you to watch the video.

Because the HB-1B does NOT have an internal antenna tuner, I turned on my ICOM-7000, went to 20 meters, and tuned my zepp di-pole 80/6-meter antenna so I had a SWR of 1.5. The band was very active. There were more di’s and dah’s spewing from my ICOM-7000 than water from a 2-inch fire hose at a three-alarm fire.

I removed the antenna cable from the ICOM-7000 and connected it to the HB-1B with a BNC adapter. I turned on the HB-1B and nothing. No sound came from the radio even though the LCD display was showing plenty of voltage and everything was fine. I plugged in my Bose earphones and I could clearly hear all sorts of QSOs in progress.

I unplugged my headphones hoping to hear sound and nothing, even though the 20-meter band was lit up brighter than Jupiter on a clear December night. Nothing.

NO SOUND was coming out of the radio. Dang it, was the speaker broken?

I looked for a switch. Nothing.

Finally, I got out the simple two-page manual. Nothing. Not a thing about how to switch between the earphones and speaker. GRRRRRRRRRR….

Guess what? The HB-1B has NO INTERNAL SPEAKER!

The folks at Ten-Tech that taped the video obviously had a small external speaker – you can see the green jack in the lower right corner of the rig when you watch the video – connected to the rig.

If you don’t want to use earbuds or a small headset and want to have audio others can hear while you operate, you’ll need to purchase a small speaker you can plug into the phone jack at the lower right corner of the handsome HB-1B.

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