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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2024
- First QSO with Pixie QRP Transceiver: 350 mile (560 km) contact with Carl, WB0CFF at noon local time using 600 mW on 7.023 MHz. Carl also provided a nice recording of the Pixie using his Ten Tec Orion, his recording is at the end of the video. 73 Lynn NG9D
Thanks, nice to see an actual QSO on a Pixie. Lots of videos of the build and testing but none showing it actually making a contact.
Thanks; I added some annotations to the video for additional explanation. 73 Lynn ... here is another QSO that shows how wide the pass band is, but a good QSO nevertheless th-cam.com/video/XTI3bxSZjJQ/w-d-xo.html. Thanks for viewing and commenting!
That's a nice job of blending your end of the QSO with what I was hearing up here. You have to be happy with the way you sounded with that Pixie. As you saw/heard, you were adequately above the background noise and I did not have to use any of the more advanced Orion DSP to do it. 73 Carl - WB0CFF
+wb0cff Thanks Carl! Yes, I am very happy with the way it sounded on your end, and really appreciate the recording you made. 73 Lynn - NG9D . .
Nice video and great QSO demo with your Pixie II. Plenty of Pixie II's on TH-cam, but very few demonstrating this tiny rig in an actual QSO. Congrats for another great video, Lynn! 73's de W B 3 B I Q.
thanks!
Lynn, I see you and Carl are at it again! Thought you might like to know that John, kc9on, has a 'pixie switch' kit available for about six bucks or so. It includes three 40m crystals, a PCB, and a four position switch. It plugs into the xtal socket of the pixie and gives you four frequencies. You use your 7.023 crystal along with his supplied 7.030, 7.055, and 7.110 crystals. Kinda neat!
de Bill, k6whp
dit dit
Great Vid, good to see contacts being made on these. Great for simple project for new trainee hams.
+Allan Thompson Hi Allan, Thanks for the kind words. I wanted to mention that the crystal that comes with this kit is for 7.023 MHz. So, at least in the USA, the guy transmitting with the Pixie must have an Extra Class amateur radio license. 73/72, Lynn
I've got one of these to build for my portable operations, first video of seeing one work , looks like I'm going to have some fun with it, thank you for sharing the video.
Looks like a definitive ham experience! Thank you!
YEP
A funny thing happened to me when building this kit... I overheated one of the ceramic capacitors when i was desoldering it to put it in the right place.
After that, the capacitor was extremely microphonic. If you touch the circuit board very gently you can hear it in the transmitted signal.
Also something starts to smoke when you use a 16v power supply instead of 9-12v. I gambled and i lost.
@@mfbfreakI smoked at 10x 1.5V AA cells on a longer carrier drop into an antenna. That unit was pushing just on a watt. The 600mA version my 9 year old son built saved the day.
You need a good antenna for qso. Otherwise you listen to yourself.
When the internet and cell phones go down the Pixie will get through! Good how you can send without a side tone..
Hi again... I bought the other versions.. with the heat sink... they both worked then failed.. Another ham had problems as well... But what I'm looking at the Pixie seems to be doing fine
+Paul Pedrazza Hi Paul, I'll let you know what happens. I'm going to do some RBN testing now, mainly to compare antennas, and will let you know how the transmitter holds up. 73 Lynn
Could this Pixie be hooked up using a Computer CW Interface and use CwGet and CwType software ?
If Guglielmo Marconi could imaging that some day one could do with a 3$ device :-)
Awesome work - i will build mine today - but first watching some YT-Videos :-)
Thanks. Have fun Mike. 73 LYNN
Mike Herbst
He would have chosen years ago a smartphone.
He was ahead of his time, on the contrary of radio operators.
all i hear is a scratch when a wire is put in the antenna jack. i am using a 7 volt battery. pge has built up a 4th wire antenna network in santa cruz. The pge voltage has got to be around 50 volts with all 35.25 feet of wire. The powers arcs across the light switches at night.
i hooked mine up to my time wave dsp599zx filter lol made it clean and loud!!!!
Lynn, I suspect all Pixies are not created equal. Which transistors are used in your Pixie? By the way, I put two 6 V lantern batteries in series with a 1.5 V D cell to get a good voltage without the power supply hum. 73, Keith. KE4TH
Nice video. Thanks. Working on getting my little pixie on air. Waiting for some connectors. What do you use to match the antenna? What is the antenna? 73 KM6NJQ
Hi Robert, Full size Loop antenna with ZM-2 antenna tuning unit. 73 Lynn NG9D
Hi Lynn. I just bought a Chinese Pixie 4.1, but have yet to build it. A question: Why do you have to keep adjusting trimmer W1 during the RX part of the QSO? And is the W1 trimmer an RF frequency adjust or a CW tone adjust? 73 es TNX!
+cottersay Hi- thanks for the comments. This was the first QSO I made and was trying to figure out what pitch was the easiest to copy with the little earbuds. Really no reason otherwise, although I guess it might be possible to slightly decrease QRM by adjusting the received frequency. The trimmer only adjusts the receiver frequency a bit, but does not affect the crystal controlled transmitter frequency. I built two of these, the first one transmits on a frequency of 7.0231 MHz and the one in this video transmits on 7.2300 MHz. 73 Lynn NG9D
+NG9D Thanks Lynn!!
Lynn, I enjoy your videos. Wondering what type of 40 M antenna you have. Also, who makes the key your using? Thanks . Bob AC9MG . Carol Stream, Il.
+Bob Hi Bob, Thanks. The antenna is about 200 ft of insulated wire in a vertical oblong loop wrapped around three trees, bottom fed at 8 feet and overall height about 35 feet. The straight key was made by Joe, K8LKC (SK). 73 Lynn - NG9D
ㄈ
What kind of antenna do you recommend? Does it require a tuner, swr meter, or are there simple designs that don't cost much money? If the kit is $3 I don't want to spend $50 to get on the air.
offset is not good .drifting between rx and tx.
KE0JBL I built one of these a few weeks ago, sadly I never confirmed the plug (this came with just some wire plugs for power antenna and ground) was properly polarized, and hooked her up backwards. I tried her first with a weak 5 volt battery pack and of course she didn't work and the PS dropped from 5 volts to 1.2 immediately. I shut her down and checked then reversed the wires and hooked her up again, this time to a more powerful 12 volt battery pack I have for testing. I think I can receive, but there is no traffic here, and I have a very poor antenna system right now. My power meter shows nothing on the output from the radio, so I don't know if I nuked her completely or not. I have another on the way from a different seller.
pull out the transistors a nd the ic or just buy another pixie kg6mn
Nice video. FB FIST. QRPp much fun. I have to stay above 7.025 but still much fun. 72, Terry - KB8AMZ
Great video
560km woooooooo
Just assembled what looks like an identical kit. Thanks for the tip on getting rid of the receive buzz by switching to a 9V battery! My power output is 5 dB down from 0.5 watt so apparently my power amplifier transistor or that part of the circuit is not working. Any ideas on cause? Have kept voltage between 9V and 12V during testing. 73, KE4TH.
Have you figured out the problem ?
73 N8AUM
Yes. Typical power is very low, around 200 mW, so my expectations were wrong. I changed out the power transistor to a 2N2219A and was able to get 0.6 W with 14 VDC power with a cooling fan for the 2N2219A. I did burn up one SS8050 (original power transistor) running 12 VDC with the key down for a few seconds. So heat dissipation is key for higher power. I also bought a 7.030 MHz crystal to put the rig on the QRP frequency. 73, KE4TH
Keith, thanks for the information on your Pixie. In this video, I was using an old battery p/s, two 6V lantern batteries in series; but they were over four years old and producing only about 11V. At that voltage level I was getting 0.6W. I have made two of these Pixies, and when I power them with a bench supply at 13.8V they produce 1.0W or so as shown on this other video th-cam.com/video/oNu0kqH5Jnw/w-d-xo.html Please keep us updated on your Pixie, and I will be listening on 7030 kHz for you! 73 de Lynn / NG9D . .
To bad that these radios, as shipped from China, are only available in the US Extra band.
Check out the simple mods by LA3ZA to reduce the broadcast breakthrough.
It just moves D3 to keying line and pin7 and considerably reduces value
of R3. Also 47uF pin7 to ground helps.
la3za.blogspot.com/2003/04/using-pin-7-of-lm386-to-reduce-bci-and.html
Great video, tnx fr sharing!
73 N8AUM
VY FB Marvellous!
Why did they make all of these in the Extra part of the band for? That doesn't really make sense.
factory workers can go home.
In China and many Asian countries 7.025+ is for SSB
I am in South Korea. From General license, we get all bands all modes. Our 40m CW band is 7.000 to 7.030, then Digital/All Mode from there to 7.040, and All Mode from there to 7.200, where broadcast begins. China similar, I bet.
No side tone?
Correct :)
boy