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The "pixie" qrp tranciever is a minamalist rig using minimal components. It is fun to build and has a variety of mods to enhance its performance. Output power is in the range of 250mw to 500mw depending on the transistors.As you would expect from a rig like this it does have its problems but there is lots of info on the web regarding mods and "fixes" for this rig. It can be made in an evening and can be an ongoing project for anyone interested in building and i am sure it will give anyone interested in homebrew qrp projects hours of tinkering time.
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.
Below is my homebrew pixie next to the kit pixie .This is slightly different as in it doesn't use the LM386 chip as does the kit pixie. I tried this design to see if it gave any better results than the original. All in all for the extra components used there really isn't any advantage that i have noticed. It does work but could do with a little more audio gain .
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. Great little toy to take on walkabout.
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