S-Pixie QRP kit for 4,79 € shipped from Hong-Kong hooked to my Spectrum Analyzer
Two weeks ago I ordered the S-Pixie kit for 4,79 Euro on Ebay incl. shipping and case from Hong-Kong. It took exactly 2 weeks to arrive. The kit came in a plastic bag as usual and included no instruction and no manual. I also got 7 more resistors and 5 more capacitors than needed. I found the schematics and part list online, so the assembling (with double-checking everything) took me about 2 hours. It worked on the first attempt and I received morse code on around 7023 kHz. While hooked up to my bench power suppy I checked the output power vs. the input voltage. 300mW output are reached with 11V only. For me that sounds like a good sweetspot and as the transistor Q02 will get very hot on TX, this is a good value for the battery voltage. I later googled and found out that the Pixie is oscillating also while it is in receive-mode so I hooked it up to the spectrum analyzer to see if this is true and to also check the transmit spectral purity. My Pixie is pushing 6mW on 20m, while sending morse code on 40m. Not a good value.