Whispering with a VCXO-AXE

My VCXO-AXE WSPR transmitter kit from W5OLF came this morning. It was two weeks in the post, doubtless due to Customs which had opened the package. I wasted no time in building it, though it did take me somewhat longer to complete than it took AE5X.

The kit itself has been impressively put together. The PCB is extremely high quality and the instructions are almost of Elecraft standard. If the horrible Spectrum Communications Off-Air Frequency Standard kit had been produced to this level of quality it might not have turned out to be a failure for me. If American kit makers can produce nice silk screened and solder masked boards, why do ours make us struggle with boards that look like they were made by hand on somebody's kitchen table?

The VCXO-AXE kit uses almost all through hole components and there is plenty of space around the solder lands. I doubt that anyone would have any trouble building this. The one part that induced a feeling of terror when I saw it was the VCXO itself.

As described, it is a "larger surface mount component." But what I didn't expect was that it didn't have any pins or legs that stick out to solder to. Instead, you have to solder it so the solder goes under or up the side of the chip. You need a very fine tipped soldering iron for this. I couldn't really see if I had successfully soldered the chip or not, so I took a couple of pictures.

The result is not very pretty, but it must have been OK because the transmitter eventually worked!

When ordering, I specified  my call, locator and the supply voltage I would be using (12V, as I planned to power the transmitter off a pack of 10 NiMH batteries.) The PICAXE controller chip came programmed with this information and a power level of 33dBm - 2 watts.

On a freshly charged battery pack I was actually getting nearer 3 watts output once the PA tuning capacitor had been peaked up, but after the first few transmissions the power did drop off a bit to become nearer the advertised 2 watts.

I hooked the VCXO-AXE up to my attic MFJ magnetic loop, watched the radio-controlled clock in the shack until it rolled over to an even minute, pressed the transmit button and a couple of minutes later had my first WSPR spots.

Soon after that I had several more. No great DX, but perhaps that is just down to conditions at the moment.

The instructions warn that second harmonic suppression of this transmitter is not great and an external low pass filter is advised. However, the magnetic loop (either the MFJ or my portable Wonder Loop) has a very high Q which I am sure does a good job of attenuating out of band harmonics on its own.

My next move will be to build the little transmitter into a plastic box and use it as a hand held portable WSPR rig. It would be fun to try making a 30m base loaded whip - which should also be fairly high Q - and see how well that works. So expect some WSPRing from various locations around Cockermouth some time soon!

This was a fun project and a good morale booster to prove to myself that I can still build stuff - and with an SMT part in it, too! Thanks to Jay W5OLF for making the kit available. A 20m version would be nice, as well!

If you want to buy one of these kits for yourself you have to look on eBay, though as of right now there doesn't seem to be any for sale.