The Pixie Transceiver

On a whim I bought a cheap Chinese pixie kit from eBay. These are cheap kits, less than five dollars, that generally put out less than 1 watt. All that arrived was a static bag with the pcb and parts. There was a schematic on the eBay page, and I was able to assemble without much trouble. One of the capacitors was the wrong value, but I installed it anyways, since I didn't have a spare of the marked value. I didn't install the power LED or the buzzer. I don't think that this will be a problem. I attached a 9V battery and an RCA connector for the antenna and was ready to test.

Pixie, ready to be tested.

Attaching a dummy load, I keyed the transmitter. There was a click in the headphones, and the noise was muted, so it appeared that the transmitter was working. My dummy load, from QRP Guys, has pins that can be used to find the power. My calculations showed that the pixie was putting out about 200 mW. This is much less than the 800 mW at 9V the website claims.
I connected my antenna and immediately heard a number of stations. Tuning around with my KX3 I discoverd that they were up to a kilohertz away from 7.023, the crystal frequency. The receiver is wide open.

In an Altoids tin, for size comaparison. Plenty of room left for a 9v battery.

After thinking a bit, I decided that it would be easier to experiment if the radio wasn't soldered into a PCB, so I ordered two more from ebay. They're so cheap. Once they arrive, I'll assemble them on a breadboard so I can poke around with an oscilloscope and change the circuit easily. Then, one will get mounted in an Altoids tin to be brought out into the field for some QRPp fun. Stay tuned for updates when the other pixies arrive.