M0TEF - QRP and Amateur Radio

I have been really enjoying working with the you kits HB1B and have used it most days to make a QRP CW contact by the bedside station or out portable. So far I've been using a 12v SLAB as a power source but it has proven to be a pain to carry around with such a weight. I emailed you kits to see if I could buy an internal battery pack and was told this is not possible because of shipping issues. What to do? Make my own... I found lots of great information online and set about making a 18650 lithium battery pack to put inside the rig but the more I learnt about balanced charging the more I felt this should be a consideration so I also purchased a small PCB from an eBay seller that allowed balanced charging and voltage limit on discharge too. It was not hard to make a pack that charged nicely from 12v and allowed me to fit the whole thing internally.  Please ignore my messy bench but here is the pack and control board as I soldered all the connections up. I did a dry run on the bench ...

Below is a copy of the video I made showing how the 30m Pixie behaved in testing and how I modified it for the band. I have yet to test it better as conditions have naturally gone bad since it was complete. I did get a few reverse beacon network spots form Europe last night but nothing worth shouting about. I hope to have a half decent contact with it soon.

I haven't been on my blog recently but that doesn't mean I have not been actively seeking more QRP adventures. I had been enjoying messing about with a Pixie 2 given to me by M0SIY when he almost died laughing at the strange chirping signal it produced. The good news was I was able to get it to play ball and started to modify the little rig to cover more frequencies with switched crystals and a ceramic resonator to allow me to cover more frequencies with the little gem. The picture shows, left to right,my amplified speaker, 30m, 40m and 20m versions of pixies lined up next to the key. Indications on my meters suggest I'm getting 500-600mW from the rigs with 12v input voltage about 200-300mW with a 9v battery. So during my trials I was enjoying the fact that the kits are so cheap that you can mess about with them until you can't find anything else to do with them but without adding any stress on the bank balance. I ordered three other boards, some inductors, crystals and...