Small Hurewicz and Menger sets which have large continuous images

We provide new techniques to construct sets of reals without perfect subsets and with the Hurewicz or Menger covering properties. In particular, we show that if the Continuum Hypothesis holds, then there are such sets which can be mapped continuously onto the Cantor space. These results allow to separate the properties of Menger and S₁ (, O) in the realm of sets of reals without perfect subsets and solve a problem of Nowik and Tsaban concerning perfectly meager subsets in the transitive sense. We present also some other applications of the mentioned above methods.