S-Pixie CW QRP Ham Amateur Shortwave Radio Transceiver 7.023 7.050 Mhz DIY Kits with Transparent Acrylic Shell

This is a fun little project to build a 1 watt QRP CW transceiver. The kit is well designed and the build instructions are easy to follow. The case is well made and fits like a glove. It comes with two crystals so you can choose which frequency you would like to transmit on. I now have an inexpensive unit to practice my CW skills. It is surely a low cost tool to help you learn morse code. 73 W4WQC.

Bought as just a little project to practice my soldering skills. Straight forward project which actually worked upon completion.

Built this radio for fun, for soldering practice, and for experimentation. Mine came with a frosted plastic case, see pictures. The radio is very sensitive, but selectively is not great. Local AM broadcast stations do sometimes bleed into this radio no problem. However I was able to hear CW signals though not in tune with my radio. My Pixie transmits on 7.0490.90 MHz. Best way to make contact is to toss out your callsign and wait to see if a hunter can tune into your signal. I recommend powering the radio with a battery. Noise from a AC power supply will bleed into the audio output. Another recommendation is to leave the buzzer covered with its sticker to reduce noise. The buzzer is quite loud and bothering when transmitting.

Press the button and it goes beep! Not too bad to assemble.

Was a fun kit radio to put together, but this is the second time parts were missing from the kit... very disappointed, nearly complete and key component missing. Need to improve quality control...

The kit was easy and fun to put together. The instructions that came with the kit was ok. Not the best, but sufficient and even helpful at times. Alignment of the transceiver was easy. For what it is, it is worth the price. It's fun. I like the case. You have to figure it out, but it isn't that difficult. For fun, I'd buy it again and recommend you buy it, if you like to build electronics kits. BTW, you MUST be a licensed Ham to transmit with this radio on the air.

Unlike many of the other kits for sale that only include 7.023MHz which is only legal for EA licensed operators the 7.050MHz is legal for T/G as well. Don't let them fool you about the offset as this is only the receive and the transmit will only be on the frequency of the crystal installed. The vendor emailed the instructions for building and the are decent enough to built it. I did find that the L1 included was wrong as per the schematic but it seems that most kits do this. It also needs to be said that this will operated on 7-12v BUT due to the voltage drop from the reverse polarity diodes the LM386 will not work until 10+ volts are applied so you can't receive on a 9v battery. If you bypassed the diode rectifier this would solve that but you will need to make sure your polarities are correct than.

I think it works but I was not able to complete test due to poor quality parts. I completed assembly to find that the 3.5mm jacks are of low quality. There was a constant tone and when I put in the headphones, a louder tone occurred- there is no volume control. My keyer would not activate the right paddle. Resistance checks showed an open contact. You could see in the 3.5mm case that the springs and contacts were not in the same place between the two. Contact checks were also inconsistent between the 2. This is a kit with limited instruction, but good pictures. There is no how to manual, lots of guessing and trial an error would be needed, but that's part of HAM radio. I am thinking of trying another one. You need an ohm meter to measure the resistors as the color band are hard to figure out. The print on the capacitors is very small so you need a good magnifying glass. Assembly of parts is good, but the solder points are small, so a fine tip soldering iron is a must with good 60/40 solder. Consider using good fine solder for this pc board. This kit came with 2 crystals of different frequencies while others only had one. It can be used as a code practice oscillator with a 50ohm dummy load. You can jumper select for either sound or LED. The plexiglass case fits well and looks cool. 01-30-2023- I tried a second one and the 1/8" jacks work better, I do not have spurious noise as before, although the headphones are noisy. I am still not able to use a paddle on this device, so it seems to be for a straight key only.