pixie 2 cw tranciever

Above is the populated board.This is the kit pixie which was sent to me from the USA and cost $9.99. To be honest you could buy the parts if you dont already have them for a fraction of this and i feel the only real advantage to buying the kit is that the board allows it to be smaller than i could make by homebrewing the same circuit. (see homebrew pixie below). BELOW is the finished pixie housed in a chocolate box so it can be viewed. It is standard and has no mods done to it. I will leave this as is and i will modify my homebrew one. Does it work? YES ,it does suffer with nearby broadcast station breakthrough sometimes but again i will sort this out on the homebrew one. *PLEASE NOTE* these will probably need a tx/rx switch , on checking the transmit and recieve freq of the pixie there was around 1Kh difference. Maybe this was the reason i heard no one calling back to me :-)

Below is my homebrew pixie . I tried this design to see if it gave any better results than the original. The main difference is the tx/rx switch . Simply instead of directly grounding the xtal i fed it to the center pin of a SPDT switch. The TX side has a 100pf cap to ground which puts the xtal at 7.028 . The RX cap has a 1000pf cap which puts the xtal at 7.028.6 .. A 600 Hz shift which should be fine. You may have to experiment a little with the cap values to get the xtal where you want it and the right offset, the figures quoted may work for you or you may have to experiment. I have had 3 qso's in the first half hour but had to resort to using my main rig as i couldn't really hear the other station loud enough. I'm not sure if using a variable cap on the RX side would help , maybe a 700 Hz shift would yeald better results ? When i fitted the side tone circuit( see album) i noticed increased broadcast station breakthrough, a simple 1uh inductor from the antenna to ground solved this ..Doing this will reduce your output power though, i found it dropped by 100mw.Fitting the particular side tone i used ended up causing more problems than it was worth as the 555 chip seemed to be amplifying hash so i resorted back to listening to my tone via a receiver until i come across a better design, this resulted in far better rx.

Pixie schematic

Below is the schematic for the pixie tranciever. This has come from the net and there are a couple of variations on this but basically most are the same. Again very few components and building couldn't be easier especially if you use the "ugly" style using copper board to solder all the earthed components down providing a solid foundation for the other parts to be fitted.Again this is the basic design but there are a few simple mods to make this little radio a bit better like a simple rit and sidetone circuit and with the use of two xtals or a resonator along with a variable capacitor giving some degree of frequency coverage. All in all whether homebrewed or kit this minamalist rig has lots to offer for the experimentor.

Above is the "standard" layout. My pixie has the tx/rx switch at the xtal . L3 is also switched with an added 2.2uh so my pixie is dual band, 80/40. 400mw out. This is being heard on the band and getting results. I have the side tone circuit built and need to fit this along with an audio amp. It will run 8 ohm speakers but too quiet. A side tone and audio amp is no harder than building the rig itself so no problem there.All in all , if you like qrp and a bit of building buy or make a pixie , they are great fun and with a few mods and a decent antenna actuall will work FB.. **TIP** IT GOES AGAINST THE GRAIN TO TRY AND USE THIS TYPE OF RIG WHEN THE BANDS SEEM QUIET BUT IT REALLY IS A GOOD IDEA , LOTS OF STATIONS WORKING JUST MEANS YOU'LL GET WIPED OUT.TRY CALLING ON A QUIET BAND THIS WAY SOMEONE MAY HEAR YOU ****** TRY IT