QRP Pixie Kit Build

I spent this weekend building this little kit from NightFire Electronics. It was only $9 US plus shipping.http://www.vakits.com/catalog/ham-radio-kits

The build process took me 4 hours total. I know, many would ask "Why so long?". This was my first kit build. With each part I verified the identifying markings one by one before placing them on the board.

Beginning with the inductors, I used this website to verify the values. http://www.learnabout-electronics.org/ac_theory/inductors04.php .

The capacitors slowed me down a bit. The schematic kept switching between uF and pF. I had to take extreme care with proper decimal position. A capacitor marked "104" is .1 uF not .01 uF. Electrolytic capacitors are much easier to identify, but their polarity must be observed.

Resistor values were easiest to determine using a chart.

The remainder of the components were easy to install. The circuit board was very well marked for proper positioning . Each part was placed onto the circuit board as close as possible. The excess leads were bent over on the backside to hold them in place.

Soldering is new to me. However, I have been practicing. Keeping a clean, fine tipped, tinned soldering iron helped make my task progress well. After a few connections were soldered, clipping the excess leads, made it possible to clearly solder more.

I noticed several "cold" joints. A brief touch of the iron on EVERY connection has them all looking shiny.

My kit was ordered with a 7.050 crystal. During testing, I used a random wire antenna and an SDRPlay to determine the frequency range of 7.0485 to 7.0511. Using the same wire I could hear CW signals on the speaker.

This has been a great first build. I hope to incorporate this kit into future projects.