UPDATED NOTE, MAY 2008: This is an old video from a year or more ago, when I was just getting my feet wet with building some HF radio kits. The Pixie is a great place to get started. I don’t have a great deal of knowledge of radio theory, but this was educational in the visceral sense that I got to touch and feel the static and sounds of the HF spectrum. As far as being educational, well, it’s not. Just enjoy this panorama of my small circuit board built on the kitchen table. I’m licensed as a General, but I am a novice builder. I assembled a Pixie I bought on Ebay, went over all the solder joints. This video shows what I get when I have the transceiver on the bench. The crystal is marked 7.040, but I seem to get signal at 7.038 +/-. So, it appears the XMIT function works–at least better than receive audio. I get a buzz when 9V is applied with a small dry battery. However, when I transmit “V” from my TS850S, the Pixie is making audio of it. Things work–but not everything works. I hope YouTube will work as a forum to get me on the air. Any tips? Please leave your comments on how to stop this op-amp from motorboating, and how to rubber teh xtal with a simple RIT. NOTE: These notes are old, and the pixie is semi-operational as of May 15 2007. But I’m still futzing with it. Next up–the mighty ROCK MITE!

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