Pixie2

From wikipost
Jump to navigation Jump to search

I bought this radio off eBay in 2015 and it's very low power and has some pros and cons:


Pixie-qrp-cw-trx 01.jpg

Pros:

  • Crystal controlled
  • Cheap, easy to build
  • low power usage (standby current about 20mA @ 12V, 100mA on transmit)
  • On-board LM386 audio amplifier (drives low impedance speaker or headphones)


Cons:

  • Only capable of listening/transmitting on ONE frequency
  • No sidetone when keying
  • Loud DC-bumps (popping/clicking sound) when keying
  • only CW, no AM or SSB


Some details:

The Pixie 2 is a tiny rig, with a standard two-transmittor transmitter. It's a Colpitts oscillator, left running and a keyed Power Amplifier. There is no external mixer used to feed the audio amplifier. Instead, the mixing is done at the final amplifier itself with the resulting audio taken off the emitter.

There is no Receiver Incremental Tuning (RIT).



  • Power input: 9V - 12V (Q2, the S8050 gets hot with too much input voltage!)
  • Power consumption: 10mA RX, 100mA TX (@ 9V)
  • TX Power: 1.2W @ 12V, 0.8W @ 9V
  • QSK (Full break-in) CW


Schematic:

Pixie-qrp-cw-trx 02.jpg


Unpopulated PCB:

PIXIE(120322).PCB.jpg


Some history about the Pixie transceiver.

http://www.gqrp.com/The_Sprat_Pixie_File.pdf