The Pixie 2 (re-visited)

2011-10-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of my Pixie 2, 40 meter transceiver, that I built Manhattan style on a small piece of double sided copper clad pc board. The open aluminum enclosure is from an old oscilloscope that I robbed for parts. My current project is still in the prototype stage. I built 2 Pixie's when I lived out in El Paso but I never got them to work because at the time I could not put up a good antenna because of housing restrictions where I lived (Ft. Bliss). I sold one of my Pixie 2's on ebay and the buyer told me that he made a QSO with it right away. My other Pixie 2 was a prototype that I built where I could change parts easily and experiment, but I never was able to make a QSO with it. Out of frustration I deleted my pictures of the circuit and unsoldered all the parts and put them back into my parts junk box and then I said to myself "I will never build a Pixie 2 ever again! :)

I decided to give the Pixie 2 another try and that is why I am naming this Post "The Pixie 2 (re-visited)". I used the QST November 2007 article entitled: "Building Kits to Learn" to construct my circuit and identify the parts I needed. I like Rich Mitchell, N3III's writing style and philosophy of building kits. Of course, my build is not a kit, I just used the schematic to figure out where to put the parts on the pc board. I ran out of room for the LM386 circuit and as a result, that part of my circuit is ugly. I will rebuild the entire circuit after I spend more time in experimenting with this little transceiver.

I added a SPST switch to the crystal circuit (not in photo) to ground the crystal when in transmit mode. I also added a small variable capacitor to let me experiment with receive offset frequency. I am shooting for 600 hz offset. I still need to monitor the transmit and receive frequency on my Icom IC-718 so I determine how close in frequency the Pixie 2 is operating the crystal frequency of 7.040 Mhz.

On October 17th I went out on my back porch and hooked up the Pixie2 to my BLT tuner and 40 meter dipole and began calling CQ using a 9 volt battery for my power supply. No one responded to my CQ's but it sure is nice to know that the Reverse Beacon Network heard my signal! My Pixie 2 puts out about 300 milliwatts according to my homebrew QRP wattmeter.

Some of the issues that have surfaced from this design are microphonics, hum, and Broadcast Band interference. However, I am not going to give up this time. :)

Using Cookie Tins for QRP Projects

2011-08-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

Today I received a cookie tin filled with brownies from a friend of mine at work. As soon as I saw the container I immediately said to myself that "it would work great for a QRP project!" So here is a picture of the cookie tin. I am looking for a way to remove the paint from the tin box.

N8WQ - QRP Workshop

The Pixie 2 (re-visited)

Using Cookie Tins for QRP Projects