Pixie II (page 4)

I decided to try something different in the way of packaging since everyone else is doing the 'Tin' thing. (but I'm sure I'll do one in a tin later, hehehe:)

I dug through my junk drawers and came up with a pair of cheap-o kid's walkie-talkies that I bought to help install my satellite dish with.  (wrap some tape around the PTT and lay it in front of the TV while I'm on the roof and I can hear the signal)  This particular talkie was made to look like a cell phone.  (just what you kid needs, a cell phone, not! hehe:)  Anyways here is the first 'fitting' that I did.  It fit just fine as you can see, actually it's a bit smaller than the original board that I took out.   I scrapped all of the components from the Talkie board though so it wouldn't be a total loss of the radio :)



 

The first modificaton that I made to the Talkie was finding a place to put my Morse Key jack!  I decided it would only be fitting ot put it in the same hole as the microphone was origianally!   So after breaking the old glue off of the mic I got it out and started enlarging the hole with the dremmel tool and sanding down some of the inside so that the jack would fit!   You can see my little booboo where I sanded too much and put a tiny hole in the side.  Ouch!   The right picture is of the jack installed and ready to go!

Look at the jack in the left picture though.  There are actually 3 contacts that you can use here, and I did.  It is only a 2 contact switch but it has a nice little 'extra'.  There are two + or positive poles and one - or negative/ground.  I hooked the main Key wire from the radio to the main positive and I hooked one of the wires from the Talkie's built in Key button to the other Positive on the jack.  I wired the ground on the jack to the ground on the board and the second wire on the Talkie's Key.  Now you can use the cheesy built in Key or you can plug in your external key and it will bypass the internal Key and you can use your Straight Key!  Neat-o!


 
 

I put the Coax plug on top next to the antenna slot.  I wanted to use the antenna spot but it just wouln't work there.  The first photo is a test fit.  In the bottom left picture I threaded the wire through the radio and then soldiered it to the connector that the 'hands' are holding.  The upper right photo is taken right after I had soldiered the center pin and still have the ground to go.  IN the bottom right photo I wound up putting a bit of tape around the base just to make sure that nothing would come into contact with the wiring.  If you look closely you can see that I soldiered the nut to the threads.  It didn't hold and I wound up removing the soldier.  (had a hard time getting the nut tight in the limited space.)

I installed the power toggle switch just above the Morse key slot.  I wired the + from the 9volt battery to one pin and the + side of the board to the other.  I used the volt meter set in 'omhs' to figure out which way was ON with the switch so I would put it in the right direction! :)

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