In testing the one I just completed I was heard by an SDR weblinked radio in San Francisco California. I am in Mesa AZ. (about 600 miles give or take). Unfortunately my RX circuit has a squealing noise much like a digital mode signal being received
That signal you picked up must have been an extremely strong signal. In looking at the schematic of this pixie kit, there is no rf amplifier on receive. It's a glorified Xtal receiver really. Will only pick up very very strong signals
One thing to note is that, unless you have an Extra-class ticket, you cannot transmit below 7.025. Since most cheap kids are between 7.023 to 7.026, you can only use around 1/3 of the tuning range to transmit.
I bought 2 Pixie kits for US$ 2.44 in an Ebay auction, including shipping. How can these people still make a profit? Amazing! I assembled one of them and will turn it into a low power beacon together with a (cheap clone) Arduino. A lot of fun for little money. Thanks for the video!
Thanks for your reply. I was wondering about the beacon Ingeborg mentions, how to build one using these kits . Does this beacon works with cw? I'm new to the hobby but really amazed with these projects.
On the Pixie 2 kits, they just add a simple buzzer between the key trace and ground. You might give that a try. I haven't built mine all the way yet so I haven't tried but plan to.
I can hear a lot of videos real good. I wish I could hear yours. (captions) Several years ago I make a few contacts on my homemade 2 or 3 transistor VFO at about 140 mW. (Oh I used NP0 caps to get an almost stable frequency.) I'd listen to my tone in my Rx and sent at a speed that kept the cil from warming up enough to drift. lol One of my QSOs was from Louisiana up into Canada and another was farther South inside the States. So 300 mW from your Pixie is about twice as much as my 140 mW VFO. I also chuckled with your silent side tone. My first rig was an old Swan 400. It had no side tone so I watched the power needle swing to let me "hear" my keying. I used it that way for over a year. Im in the US and just got done looking at Pixie kits on Amazon. Most reviews were bad, so I'm guessing they expected the performance of a 100 watt Xmitter. One reviewer said the rigs were Rx only. Over here they're 3 to 4 times your cost, but still worth it if I can get it to work. Here they also offer the 49er. Thanks for the video and for telling me about the Whisper starions.
Difficile en réception à cause du manque de filtrage et peu de puissance pour les longues distances. En local peut être, avec une antenne d'une demi onde (20m)... Discret et pas cher... A creuser...
Very nice! I wish I could CW, but I think it is very difficult! to build A TX and RX no problem! can even hang an Arduino on, but then I would also have to know CW, I think! friendly greetings from The Netherlands! Rob.
So I bought a Pixie, put it together and IT WORKED! Connected to the 40m dipole antenna I made I could hear morse code with the 7.030 crystal installed! I thought wouldn't it be cool to put it in an altoid can and string a dipole antenna up in the local park and see if I could make a contact. Well, after carefully insulating it from and mounting it to the inside of an altoid can, I now pick up a local FM radio station as well as the morse code. I am guessing it needs an RF filter? I took it back out of the altoid can but I can still hear the FM radio station and the morse code. Any ideas anybody?
@@RadioPrepper You are correct, the interference is comming from 1280 AM The Zone. It was painfull to listen to a sports interview long enough to get their call sign, but I did. They broadcast at 50,000 watts during the day and 670 at night. If you check out my youtube channel you can see my first Pixie field test. Keep up the good work!
Well, you can use of sorts of antennas, assuming they are the correct size. A dipole would be the usual way, about 65ft fed in the middle, twice 32.5ft. I prefer an end fed, so a 65ft wire with an end-fed tuner at the end, like the MEF-1.
I know it's been a while ...but what if you have two pixies in the same room or in close proximity to each other, with a piece of wire as an antenna just to test it.
Hello again, still waiting for the kit, any ideas on a balun for inverted v I'm trying to build.I have ft-250-43 ferrite toroid ,baluns...so simple yet so confusing, thanks again 73' kb9zrp
Hello, yes, it worked right away, but I have a lot of experience building kits, including a K2 and the Weber surface-mount designs, so this was was simple. This kit is a very good one for beginners.
Add a small auto keyer..buy a curtis keyer on a chip and you'll have an auto key and sidetone... also it would be nice if they had it on the qrp calling frequency of 7.030
my daughter just finished hers, it started to smoke haha :-) we will get another one and keep attempting until we get it right? i notice it seemed to be reverse when keyed it did not transmit when not keyed it transmitted then it started to smoke, any ideas :-)
Yes i ordered a couple more but i belive i found the issue, we are all just learning this stuff so have NO IDEA what we are doing. I grabbed a wall wart out of my junk box that said 12 volts but i did not check it first turned it it was 15volts looks like i fried the 8050 transistor. based on everything i have been reading online from others that put to much voltage on the pixie
A black van will stop in front of your house at 4am and four masked men will break-in, drag you out of bed and throw you in the back bound and gagged. You will never be seen again. Don't do It!
Licensed ham operators will look up the call sign, see that it's fake and snitch. You'd also shit up the airwaves with interference because you don't know what you're doing and in so doing make them less useful for everyone including yourself. Doing this the right way isn't that difficult and it costs about $15. It'll also help you out in the long term.
built 4 now not one works , one does nothing but buz the others are paper weights . they have been built methodologically as i an good with electronics as i was test repairer and fault finder at sony so its not me . been tested and checked by others and they have built them with same results
There is no quality on today radio communications! You speak with boring people, living in countries which you can easy travel with only a fraction of what a modern transceiver cost. People have difficulty to wake up from their childhood dreams.
+Guardian Observer Indeed, most of the interesting conversations I've had on Ham radio were pre-arranged. The good old CB of the early 80s was more interesting. I never understood making contacts for the sake of logging them. If it wasn't for a few interesting people and experimentation, radio would be a secondary hobby for me.
I have one of those. It really works ! Mine picks up a lot of RX noise from local cellular base staions. The buzzing gets in everywhere !
Always appreciate and enjoy your videos.
Outstanding! Your videos are always pleasant and refreshing.
thanks for sharing.
Thanks Julian, not as good as yours yet :-)
Radio Prepper Is not a race! I'm happy others are out there sharing the knowledge
Of course :-) I am just complimenting your editing.
I have a few of these kits around. After you build one to experiment with you can use the parts in the other kits for other building projects.
In testing the one I just completed I was heard by an SDR weblinked radio in San Francisco California. I am in Mesa AZ. (about 600 miles give or take). Unfortunately my RX circuit has a squealing noise much like a digital mode signal being received
That signal you picked up must have been an extremely strong signal. In looking at the schematic of this pixie kit, there is no rf amplifier on receive. It's a glorified Xtal receiver really. Will only pick up very very strong signals
One thing to note is that, unless you have an Extra-class ticket, you cannot transmit below 7.025. Since most cheap kids are between 7.023 to 7.026, you can only use around 1/3 of the tuning range to transmit.
I bought 2 Pixie kits for US$ 2.44 in an Ebay auction, including shipping. How can these people still make a profit? Amazing! I assembled one of them and will turn it into a low power beacon together with a (cheap clone) Arduino. A lot of fun for little money. Thanks for the video!
Hi there any way I can find out more about your project sounds interesting. Just built my first kit and still finding ways to test it
Not much else to it than what's in the video...
Thanks for your reply. I was wondering about the beacon Ingeborg mentions, how to build one using these kits . Does this beacon works with cw? I'm new to the hobby but really amazed with these projects.
On the Pixie 2 kits, they just add a simple buzzer between the key trace and ground. You might give that a try. I haven't built mine all the way yet so I haven't tried but plan to.
Great, I just might :-)
I just purchased 2 of these this evening. Paid $5.20 ($2.60 each) including shipping. Wow... hope that it works !
They do, but no filtering... A pass-band filter would make it much better...
I can hear a lot of videos real good. I wish I could hear yours. (captions) Several years ago I make a few contacts on my homemade 2 or 3 transistor VFO at about 140 mW. (Oh I used NP0 caps to get an almost stable frequency.) I'd listen to my tone in my Rx and sent at a speed that kept the cil from warming up enough to drift. lol One of my QSOs was from Louisiana up into Canada and another was farther South inside the States. So 300 mW from your Pixie is about twice as much as my 140 mW VFO.
I also chuckled with your silent side tone. My first rig was an old Swan 400. It had no side tone so I watched the power needle swing to let me "hear" my keying. I used it that way for over a year.
Im in the US and just got done looking at Pixie kits on Amazon. Most reviews were bad, so I'm guessing they expected the performance of a 100 watt Xmitter. One reviewer said the rigs were Rx only. Over here they're 3 to 4 times your cost, but still worth it if I can get it to work. Here they also offer the 49er.
Thanks for the video and for telling me about the Whisper starions.
Awesome, it really goes to show that it doesn't take much to make contact!
Just amazed at the price of the kit ....A Bargain
Thanks! - Love your channel.
More like 11V..
@@RadioPrepper Thanks, Gil.
Do you have a copy of the schematics? Or a link to them. Mine came without any.
Not but I am sure a cursory search on Google will be successful.
How the hell did you read that morse so quickly? Comes in pretty fast.
As It Is - I am pretty slow actually. That's only about 13wpm. I used to head-copy 22-23wpm. Practice...
Do you have a link to get it for that price?
Check Aliexpress..
Jan 26, 2024...Montreal 8pm...enjoyed your video. I purchased a Pixie...they suggest i install a dummy load.
Can you explain why?
Hi, no idea. A dummy load is just a 50-Ohm resistor.. To use how?
Thanks, interesting video..
Thanks for the comprehensive review and showing we Kent I owners on one of the "side benefits" of those paddles!
Merci de k6whp
dit dit
Thanks!
I dont know if you monitor this as old as it is, but what does the potentiometer do?
I don't remember, LOL, volume?
Gil.. Que penser de ce kit ? Un bon système pour la guerilla ?
Difficile en réception à cause du manque de filtrage et peu de puissance pour les longues distances. En local peut être, avec une antenne d'une demi onde (20m)... Discret et pas cher... A creuser...
Very nice!
I wish I could CW,
but I think it is very difficult!
to build A TX and RX no problem!
can even hang an Arduino on,
but then I would also have to know CW, I think!
friendly greetings from The Netherlands!
Rob.
Morse code takes time, but you can do it.
I'm in UK. I'm teaching myself International Morse Code.
Excellent! It is frustrating but very well worth the effort..
Frustrating is a good way to put it. I started learning Morse recently and MAN I underestimated the challenge.
So did I!
Great video!. Could anybody send me it's schematic , I lost mine
So I bought a Pixie, put it together and IT WORKED! Connected to the 40m dipole antenna I made I could hear morse code with the 7.030 crystal installed! I thought wouldn't it be cool to put it in an altoid can and string a dipole antenna up in the local park and see if I could make a contact. Well, after carefully insulating it from and mounting it to the inside of an altoid can, I now pick up a local FM radio station as well as the morse code. I am guessing it needs an RF filter? I took it back out of the altoid can but I can still hear the FM radio station and the morse code. Any ideas anybody?
Are you sure it's FM not AM?
@@RadioPrepper You are correct, the interference is comming from 1280 AM The Zone. It was painfull to listen to a sports interview long enough to get their call sign, but I did. They broadcast at 50,000 watts during the day and 670 at night. If you check out my youtube channel you can see my first Pixie field test. Keep up the good work!
Will do! Yep, no filtering... You might want to make a high-pass or band-pass filter...
I found that going through any antenna tuner helps filtering a lot.
Or a magnetic loop antenna, even better!
Will a headset (without microphone) work? Also how much voltage does it require to power a pixie transceiver?
Yes, and I use 12V.
@@RadioPrepper thanks! I'll buy one
No big risk given the price ;-)
Bonjour. If you had a pixie kit, would you be allowed to take it on a flight in your hand luggage?
Sure yes, any radio.. Only large capacity batteries are a problem, more than 100W/h.
SI POTREBBE MODIFICARE IN 11METRI E USARLO IN JS8?
No.
Great tutorial! I hope you can answer this. No one else I have contacted has the answer. What kind of plug did you use to plug into the power input?
+Jerry Adkins It's a 2.1mm (center) DC connector.
Thank you.
Can I connect the key to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi GPIO for some sort of remote keying control? I have a kit in the post to me right now.
Certainly. You will need a transistor out of the arduino. Look for keying circuits online..
Radio Prepper ace. That way I can maybe set up a keyboard interface with software since I don’t know Morse...
*ducks*
what type of antenna does the pixie require?
Well, you can use of sorts of antennas, assuming they are the correct size. A dipole would be the usual way, about 65ft fed in the middle, twice 32.5ft. I prefer an end fed, so a 65ft wire with an end-fed tuner at the end, like the MEF-1.
Nice!
Have you tried replacing the nasty caps and transistors with better ones?
Nah, not worth the time..
Whats the POT for in the middle? What does this adjust?
As It Is - The pot adjusts the receive frequency a little and affects the transmit frequency a bit as well.
Receive frequency about 4 khz.
Thanks Wayne.
I know it's been a while ...but what if you have two pixies in the same room or in close proximity to each other, with a piece of wire as an antenna just to test it.
That would probably work but I would suggest using two 100 ohm resistors in parallel on the output to avoid frying the final transistor.
@@RadioPrepper oh OK, thanks for the reminder, great videos, order mine this morning + antenna tuner so will see! Thanks again and 73
Have fun!
Hello again, still waiting for the kit, any ideas on a balun for inverted v I'm trying to build.I have ft-250-43 ferrite toroid ,baluns...so simple yet so confusing, thanks again 73' kb9zrp
43 is the correct material. Check 1:1 designs...
Thank you for posting this video. Did you get it to work correctly the first time the radio was in use?
Hello, yes, it worked right away, but I have a lot of experience building kits, including a K2 and the Weber surface-mount designs, so this was was simple. This kit is a very good one for beginners.
Add a small auto keyer..buy a curtis keyer on a chip and you'll have an auto key and sidetone... also it would be nice if they had it on the qrp calling frequency of 7.030
Great video! how can I make an antenna for it?
Simplest would be a dipole, look it up :-)
@@RadioPrepper yeah but there are several types of dipole antennas. which kind should i search for?
A regular basic dipole.
my daughter just finished hers, it started to smoke haha :-) we will get another one and keep attempting until we get it right? i notice it seemed to be reverse when keyed it did not transmit when not keyed it transmitted then it started to smoke, any ideas :-)
+The Johnny O Show LOL, I need to look at the schematic... You can buy a few just to be sure ;-) it's less than a cup of coffee per transceiver!
Yes i ordered a couple more but i belive i found the issue, we are all just learning this stuff so have NO IDEA what we are doing. I grabbed a wall wart out of my junk box that said 12 volts but i did not check it first turned it it was 15volts looks like i fried the 8050 transistor. based on everything i have been reading online from others that put to much voltage on the pixie
Link to buy this?
Search on Aliexpress..
What would happen if I used this kit without a license with a fake call sign?
A black van will stop in front of your house at 4am and four masked men will break-in, drag you out of bed and throw you in the back bound and gagged. You will never be seen again. Don't do It!
Licensed ham operators will look up the call sign, see that it's fake and snitch. You'd also shit up the airwaves with interference because you don't know what you're doing and in so doing make them less useful for everyone including yourself.
Doing this the right way isn't that difficult and it costs about $15. It'll also help you out in the long term.
What antenna should I use?
The simplest to start would be a dipole. It is cheap and easy to make. Look it up :-)
@@RadioPrepper Okay thank you but what connector should I use :)
built 4 now not one works , one does nothing but buz the others are paper weights . they have been built methodologically as i an good with electronics as i was test repairer and fault finder at sony so its not me . been tested and checked by others and they have built them with same results
It can connect to speaker directly?
Not really. I think volume would be too low..
It have to use mini amp right...interesting circuit
For a speaker I recommend it.
Hello, who could give me the value of the nominal current of the inductor L1 (22 uH)?
I have no idea..
@@RadioPrepper It's a shame because I miss this component to be able to complete the assembly of this kit. Thanks anyway.
Well, for the price you ca probably buy two or three :-)
My Pixie is in a plastic box epoxied shut :-(
@@RadioPrepper Indeed, this is what I will do hoping that this time there will be the inductance of 22 uH. Good traffic with your Pixie.
whit 400 mW you send message from usa to germany ?
France to Germany.
It is possible, though you are more likely to stay within a thousand miles or so. When the solar cycle comes back in a few years we'll see...
How can i reverse beacon with my pixie
Just call cq cq de.. then go to reversebeacon.net
@@RadioPrepper Thank you so much for the answer. I love your videos. Keep up great work 👍
Thanks will do!
Can it fit in altoid tin can?
I think so..
What kind of antenna ?
+Akshay V G I forgot!
you pay over 4 dollars for a coffee? i hope theres a few shots of brandy in it
I like fancy coffees and this is France ;-)
Видео начинается с русских
I payed less, 2,6 euro
km and meters please :)
+Todor Tihomirov I forgot this time!
Radio Prepper i thought you were frwm Belgium ot Holland
+Todor Tihomirov No, France, but I spent more than two decades in Florida so I feel half American.
ok,hearing inches is like driving on the left side of the road ,I understand it but It feels a bit strange.
+Todor Tihomirov Usually I post both, but I forget sometimes. Most of my subscribers are from the US.
There is no quality on today radio communications!
You speak with boring people, living in countries which you can easy travel with only a fraction of what a modern transceiver cost.
People have difficulty to wake up from their childhood dreams.
+Guardian Observer Indeed, most of the interesting conversations I've had on Ham radio were pre-arranged. The good old CB of the early 80s was more interesting. I never understood making contacts for the sake of logging them. If it wasn't for a few interesting people and experimentation, radio would be a secondary hobby for me.
Im watching this 7 years ago, i want one. 73 kq4hcu