Pixie CW Transceiver Build for Ham Radio 

The " Pixie" has a reputation of being hard to get working.

The intent of the Pixie was to make the cheapest, simplest transceiver humanly possible, not to make a performance HF transceiver. It's a novelty rig. There is nothing to keep the receive oscillator from radiating back out over the antenna. Early radios, TRF types all did it. But back then there were very few nearby receivers to bother. However, I did build a couple of the Pixies, (for $7 ea, why not? The parts are worth that much,) and I plan on adding a simple receive preamp between each of them and the antennas that will improve their lousy sensitivity and will act as a buffer for the oscillator to keep it from radiating on receive. I'll add a TX/RX relay to switch the preamp in and out. I'm also adding a 5W RF amp, (and low-pass filter,) to the output to bring it up to a full QRP 'gallon'. Then will come mods to clean up the CW tone and to extend the freq range of the crystal/s a few more kHz. That won't turn it into a high performance HF rig, just make it acceptable to put on the air. The whole idea of the Pixie was to show how little it actually took to get on the air. Take away all the connectors, the sockets and plugs and such, and solder wires directly to the bd and you will see there is almost nothing there. But with just a few more inexpensive or salvaged parts and you can turn it into a fun little viable and legal HF transceiver. And fun is what it's all about. Turning the Pixie into a viable CW rig is a great RF education for both noobs and more experienced hams alike.

These are operating as designed. The oscillator is always running and you are simply keying the amplifier transistor when you key the radio.

Nice video Ape. We’ll organized and explained again. We’ll done pal.

Fun little build, bought one off Amazon awhile back

Thanks man!

Hey, great vid. Thanks!

Good video Ape! Now you just need to learn CW.

The oscillator runs about 1khz higher than keyed carrier on mine. Mine works great on 12v battery and I have done several test sessions with a ham buddy about a mile from me. He says the oscillator isn’t heard at his station. My report was it’s fairly stable and had good tone. My meter says output is almost 1 watt. Receiver is very wide but my helper signal in tests was right on frequency and strong.

I have no background and very little interest in electronics, but I built one of these in 2019 for the "practical" element of my intermediate exam. During lockdown, they dropped the practical element and it doesn't look like it's ever coming back. Pity, because building this kit turned out to be fun!

Constructors be aware, my 2nd Pixie had a faulty pcb marked as PIXIE_V3.PCB which shorted the audio to earth. The track needs cutting to isolate the last two two solder connections on the PHONE socket. Not all boards may have this fault as there seems to be different manufacturers producing the kits. Check yours. G4GHB

Thank you for the video. I'm considering getting the super pixie kit. I could hear your sudio pretty good until 60 seconds and I could hear the audio pretty well again after the 24 minute mark. All between sounded almost like a whisper. I'm getting similar low audio on a lot of videos. From everyone I made that comment (IF they responded) they tell me their settings are industry standard. I suspect they set the audio by industry standard. I also suspect their vocalizations are not the same between their mike and their vocal cords. I also suspect I'll continue having low audio from videos except from those who will give the mikes enough sound to make the standard settings give adequate audio to the mikes. I have all my settings adjusted to maximum after researching a dozen videos telling me how to get my voume up enough to hear.

I ended up putting together a Pixie today and has the same results of it always transmitting. Here is a crazy thing though. The instructions talk about ignoring a voice when you first turn it on. I thought it was some poor translation. Turns out if you plug two 9v batteries together to power the Pixie with 18v it picks up an AM station lol. The signal isn't as strong if you use a wall outlet.

As others have said, the oscillator is always on, it's a characteristic of the Pixie. I suppose as it's 40db down the designer didn't worry about it! If you are familiar with Peter Parker's channel VK3YE, he classes them as a novelty rather than something you could seriously use like the 49er. Peter did do a mod to the Pixie, so that it worked as a voice transceiver. Might be worth checking out for your 2nd kit. Thanks for this video, I have two pixie kits I'm about to build. 73.

It's got a hot oscillator I've seen this happen before it's no big deal

The weak signal seen is because the final transistor functions as the product detector. The crystal oscillator has to run in the receive mode, and yes, a very weak signal can be measured locally. In all likelyhood this millawatt signal will not be detected on an average QSO unless you were very close. That is one drawback of an unbalanced product detector such as the Pixie uses. Especially when no RF amp stage precedes it. In practical situations, this will not be a problem. Notice the final is keyed, and the crystal oscillator runs 100 per cent duty cycle. It has to run to be able to receive. It generates the audible beat tone. It is then amplified by the LM386 audio ic. All the receive gain is from that one ic.

Hi, I'm not an expert, one question please, is it possible to connect an input microphone?

The BNC connector has two leads, but four holes. Two holes are labeled GND and ANT on the board. The BNC connector seems like it has "studs" that go into these holes more for stability than connectivity. Should all four holes be soldered? I'm almost done with my build--but I'm a novice and the instructions are abysmal.

Are you aware of a 20m version anywhere?

I assume a tech can use this on cw if the crystal is 7.059 MHz or if it can be tuned above 7.025 to 7.125 MHz?

Check the literature on the net. I believe they all have that oscillation in receive mode.

Do you happen to have a link to where I can purchase one of these kits?

get them glasses on

Like the original Pixie it has to produce a signal for the mixer transistor to work on receive. G4GHB

GREAT vid Ape! 73 - KF6IF

my kit is differnt to this, i only have 1 crystal and only have like 10 caps not 12 and board layout is different! ebay sucks no instructions given and no idea why most of resisters are not even coming up on ohm meter litrally stays on 1, wtf is going on!!

Quanta conversa fiada!!... Cw que é bom,neca...

I was hoping this would be a good instructional video, it is not. Just clips of some guy soldering without telling you how to actually locate or properly configure the component. A waste of time to watch