The 40 Meter Pixie (available at the time of writing for about $7 assembled on eBay) is an interesting minimalist transceiver design – crystal controlled, 2 transistors and an audio amplifier chip. And you are on the air with a unit that you can make QSO’s with! Naturally, there is much room for improvement, and it can in fact be done for only a few dollars more. Below I describe a set of additions that I think really enhances the Pixie’s usefulness.
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The unit on the right below is the QRP BMU (Base Matching Unit) intended for 42 foot to 48 foot vertical, sloper, or Inverted-L antennas. Naturally, these antennas (like all end-fed antennas) require a decent radial system for efficient operation on the lower bands.
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As part of project LOAP (Lipstick On A Pig ===> http://vtenn.com/Blog/?p=1348), I wanted a small cheap matching and SWR indication unit for the Pixie-based transceiver system. The T-Tuner and SWR bridge unit on the right, in the picture below, is not vastly different from others, but here it is for your consideration as a good performer at a low cost. Note however, that it has been characterized into real-world impedances with a worst-case loss of less than 0.9 dB.
Continue reading Yet Another QRP Portable T-Tuner and SWR Bridge for Cheap
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The Pixie is a fun and popular QRP transceiver kit. However, typical output power on 40 M is only about 300 to 500 milli-Watts – a bit too QRPp at times…
In this article I’ll show cheap and easy ways to pump up the output power to around 1.2 or over 2 Watts, depending upon the power supply type and crystal activity.
Continue reading $3 to Quintuple the Output Power of a 40 M Pixie Transceiver
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