My Chinese Pixie II 40 meter QRP kit and 40m crystal set finally arrived!
The Pixie II 40m CW QRP kit and 40m crystal QRP calling 8-pack that I ordered from EBay just arrived in the mail! I can’t wait to be done with work so I can get started assembling it! Unfortunately, I’m self employed so I work ridiculous hours pretty much every day. Boo.
I ordered a 40m crystal 8-pack (pictured below) to get the major US 40m QRP calling frequencies. I was glad to find that it came with a SIP socket strip to use for the crystal socket. And I still have to figure out an antenna for it. I think something like the doublet dipole out of speaker wire, but I’m not sure how to connect it to BNC. I’ll probably end up using a simple wire connector since I don’t plan to use coaxial cable.
As soon as I opened the kit, I was pretty impressed. I was a little surprised to find a full schematic of the Pixie II and “instructions” included with the kit. Normally, these kits come with just a PCB labeled with values and a bag of parts. The PCB is legit thru hole and small enough for the infamous and much talked about Altoids tin and is clearly labeled to be referenced to the bill of materials sheet that came with it. I can’t wait get on the air with it and I got it just in time for ARRL Field Day!