HF CW on the Cheap
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This is a project I intend to work on over Christmas break. I’m wondering if I can make a simple HF transceiver capable of working any HF band by driving a Pixie II CW transceiver with a SI 570 digital programmable oscillator.
Here’s what my pixie II sounds like on 80m.mp3 and 40m.mp3 with a strong antenna.
Preliminary work demonstrates a functional receiver powered by a crystal. I don’t think the currently-configured digital oscillator is putting out enough power to run the circuit, but it’ll take more time to get that up and running. For now, here are some photos of what I’ve got working and real sound clips of the thing are below. I’m happy with the case I built it in (thanks Ron!), and happy with my level drilling of the holes for power, output, and the CW key!
Briefly, the device is powered by a 9V battery. It’s hooked up to an 80m dipole antenna. Output is fed into a computer sound card for amplification / PSK31 analysis.
The internals reveal that it’s a simple circuit powered by a single crystal. More crystals are tucked in the case, stuck in foam, for easy transport.
Decoding of PSK31 is happening here, using output from my circuit with the 40m crystal in it.