Category Archives: QRP

New England QSO Party Fun

Posted on May 7, 2017 by robert

I don’t recall ever operating in the New England QSO Party before, but several emails were circulating encouraging activity, so I thought I’d give it a go.  Conditions were OK on the lower frequency bands — not a lot of … Continue reading →

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How Well Does the Pixie Receiver Work?

Posted on April 11, 2017 by robert

My club, Newport County Radio Club, just completed our third and final meeting on the 40-meter QRP Pixie kit.  We packaged the inexpensive Chinese QRP kit with sockets for the crystal and final transistor, two additional crystals (7.030 and 7.040) … Continue reading →

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KA1QYP Half Pint QRP Transceiver Passes FCC

Posted on March 24, 2017 by robert

In our continuing quest to evaluate the output purity of various QRP kits, Willy W1LY constructed a Bill KA1QYP Half Pint Kit. The assembled kit produced a solid 600 mW output and was one of the cleanest radios we’ve seen.  The … Continue reading →

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Pixie with 5-pole Axial Filter Passes

Posted on March 14, 2017 by robert

Willy, W1LY, decided to try using the standard unshielded 1 uH axial inductor that the Pixie uses for it’s current 3-pole filter (C5=47o pf, L2=1 uH, C6=470 pF) as the starting point for a 5-pole filter that could easily fit … Continue reading →

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Elsie Plot of QRP-Labs 7-pole 40-m LPF

Posted on March 5, 2017 by robert

This is the schematic of the 7-pole LPF used in the QRP Labs 40-meter LPF: The plot from Elsie 2.77 for the above filter looks like this: The actual SA response curve looks like this: The curves are remarkably similar. … Continue reading →

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A “Better” QRP Transceiver?

Posted on March 4, 2017 by robert

NCRC had several reasons for building the Pixie as a club project, and getting it on the air is probably at the bottom of the list.  Fixing flaws in the Pixie design provides learning opportunities.  But by the time you … Continue reading →

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Pixie Perfection

Posted on March 4, 2017 by robert

As has been noted in several posts, the stock Pixie 3-pole filter is hopelessly inadequate to suppress harmonics.  A typical Pixie will have a 2nd Harmonic that is only about -21 dB down from the carrier.  An external 5-pole filter … Continue reading →

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P2N2222A for the Pixie

Posted on February 27, 2017 by robert

On Semiconductor has a variant of the old 2N2222A in a plastic case called the P2N2222A and characterizes it as a small signal RF amplifier.  I picked up a few samples and ran three of them through the Pixie.  In … Continue reading →

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7-Pole Filter + Pixie

Posted on February 26, 2017 by robert

A friend of mine, Paul K1YBE, gave me a QRP Labs 40-meter Low Pass Filter Kit.  The kit came with three T37-6 cores, some #28 wire, 4 caps, a tiny PCB, and a couple of headers. Normally used with one … Continue reading →

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Better Q == Better Response

Posted on February 26, 2017 by robert

Yesterday I replaced the inductors in my original 40-meter LPS with larger cores that wound up having about twice the Q.  This morning I replaced the ceramic caps with silver mica caps.  The old caps had a Q around 80.  The … Continue reading →

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