Cheap pixie transceiver kit

[Buick Mackane]

Was browsing on ebay when i noticed a pixie kit for £3.89 Just wondered if anyone had bought one. If so what did you think of it ? I Built one on veroboard a while back, Except for the volume being a bit low it worked ok, But surely its worth a pop buying one at this price.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DIY-RADIO-CW- ... 51cf690f0f

[cjay]

There's been a thread on the GQRP Yahoo group about these, general consensus is that they're OK but you need a bit of care in the building, some components can be a bit random and the instructions are a little sparse.

Worth the money though.

[Buick Mackane]

There's been a thread on the GQRP Yahoo group about these, general consensus is that they're OK but you need a bit of care in the building, some components can be a bit random and the instructions are a little sparse.

Worth the money though.

Yeah defo cjay. Worth the money alone just for the PCB. The sockets look a bit dodgy, But at that price who cares. Parts can always be swapped for better quality ones, I'm having a bit of grief with paypal otherwise i'd be snapping one of those badboys up

[Adriano9966]

I can't key Morse for toffees but even I fancy the idea of building one of these .If I ever get around to some sort of Morse proficiency I would buy one and use it coupled with a HF communications receiver such as an FRG. At almost 4 quid you cant go wrong and being so low powered it would not overload the front end of the receiver and therefore enable me to monitor my transmission and improve my keying

edit I just realised this is a transceiver rather than a morse transmitter ... fantastic that they can do this for that price

[Buick Mackane]

edit I just realised this is a transceiver rather than a morse transmitter ... fantastic that they can do this for that price

I was wondering as i read your post But if you want to monitor your keying its easy enough to add sidetone, Loads of pixie mods available online, The main problem with this type of simple transceiver is if the person your having a QSO with tunes exactly to your TX Frequency (zero beat) you'll no longer hear them, But its easy enough to add a TX Offset, You can also substitute the xtal for a ceramic resonator, That with a bit of tinkering will cover almost the whole 40m band,

I see theres only one left, He seems to be the only uk stockist, Although there available from china even cheaper

[Adriano9966]

Thanks, if it is still available when I finish work this evening I will buy the last one.

[cjay]

Look for 'Frogsounds' as well, they're available from banggood.com and are also well worth the money.

From reading back over the GQRP emails I'd say it's worth spending a little time testing components before soldering and that occasionally some of the transistors are substituted for unsuitable types but with the parts being so cheap and easy to obtain it's not a huge problem.

Recently orders from China have been arriving in under a week so I'd not worry too much about location plus a lot of the 'UK' suppliers aren't holding stock here, they order from China using 'drop' shipping to remove supplier details from the packaging, some don't even bother to do that but you're essentially paying a quid or so premium for them to order it on your behalf.

[Buick Mackane]

Look for 'Frogsounds' as well, they're available from banggood.com and are also well worth the money.

Iv'e heard they sound a bit ''croaky'' on air

[cjay]

Look for 'Frogsounds' as well, they're available from banggood.com and are also well worth the money.

Iv'e heard they sound a bit ''croaky'' on air

hahahahah

Oh, these:

http://www.banggood.com/DIY-Radio-40M-C ... 73111.html

[Buick Mackane]

Oh, these:

http://www.banggood.com/DIY-Radio-40M-C ... 73111.html

Even better

if it is still available when I finish work this evening I will buy the last one.

If you do let us know how you get on with it

[Buick Mackane]

Well i took the plunge and bought myself one from china for £3.07 One that actually comes with instructions as most don't, Ok you can lookup the assembly instructions online, And theres really not a lot to them, But i prefer to have paper instructions, I'll report back in 2020 when it gets delivered

[Buick Mackane]

well my little bag of bits from asia turned up today, And it looks pretty good to me, Decent quality plated through board and they even included a few extra caps for good measure, Plus you also get a 1 watt 51 ohm dummy load resistor Currently working on a receiver, Should get round to building the pixie next week, I'll report back with my findings

[Buick Mackane]

Update

After spending hours trying to solder the pixie board iv'e finally given up, For some reason the solder wont bond to some of the pads. The board is of decent quality for the price, I can only presume it wasn't cleaned properly after being manufactured. Iv'e also noticed one of the tracks doesn't quite meet its intended target, So hence its open circuit, Maybe i was just unlucky and got a faulty board, I'll rebuild it on some copper PCB, That'll save a few weeks. Word of warning if your planning on building one of these kits, You'll need eyes like a hawk and a very steady hand and decent soldering skills + small pencil tip iron and 22 swg solder.

The components look to be the cheapest known to man, Wiggle the resistor wires twice and they'll break.( I plan to replace them with better quality ones) All the components seem to be wide tolerance as well (20%) , I Suppose the kit is worth the money for the crystal & LM386 and the inductors,

Would i buy another one ? nah, Ya only get what ya pay for as they say, If you have the parts in your junkbox knock up yer own homebrew version would be my advice

[cjay]

That's a bit crap, what seller was it? (PM if you prefer)

[StormShadow]

I bought a couple off there a few weeks ago I decided to put one together last night although I haven't tested it yet but everything soldered ok maybe you just had a bad board. I'm going to make a nice little wooden box for mine although it will go into a small metal box before it goes in the wooden box that I will make for it so it matches my morse key. If you have a soldering iron with a temperature control on it, I've found it makes soldering a lot easier.

Update

After spending hours trying to solder the pixie board iv'e finally given up, For some reason the solder wont bond to some of the pads. The board is of decent quality for the price, I can only presume it wasn't cleaned properly after being manufactured. Iv'e also noticed one of the tracks doesn't quite meet its intended target, So hence its open circuit, Maybe i was just unlucky and got a faulty board, I'll rebuild it on some copper PCB, That'll save a few weeks. Word of warning if your planning on building one of these kits, You'll need eyes like a hawk and a very steady hand and decent soldering skills + small pencil tip iron and 22 swg solder.

The components look to be the cheapest known to man, Wiggle the resistor wires twice and they'll break.( I plan to replace them with better quality ones) All the components seem to be wide tolerance as well (20%) , I Suppose the kit is worth the money for the crystal & LM386 and the inductors,

Would i buy another one ? nah, Ya only get what ya pay for as they say, If you have the parts in your junkbox knock up yer own homebrew version would be my advice