Foxed?

The FOXX-3 is a transceiver based on a design by GM3OXX and modified by G4GVM. It was published in the G-QRP magazine SPRAT in Spring 1999. The design uses the PA transistor as the receive mixer in a simple DC RX, straight through TX. It runs about 1 Watt and is crystal controlled.

I was vaguely aware of the original FOXX design but hadn't given it much thought. But then came the G QRP Mini Convention at Rochdale, held today (28 October) and there were Kanga the kit people with a new kit on show. It was the rather foxy looking FOXX-3 all ready to go and mounted in a little mint tin. It was love at first sight and I took my new FOXX home. The soldering iron came out and in a couple of hours I had my first QSO (with Adrian G4GDR QRP to QRP on 80m CW). It's a simple enough design but it really works. Strong signal handling is rather poor but what can you expect. It's a fun radio and gets you on the air for �20.

The instructions are well written and it is easy to build. A well thought out little kit. I find that mine suffers from overload from strong broadcast stations on the medium wave band. This is not a problem if the FOXX is connected via an antenna tuner however, so I will build a simple 5 element high pass filter together with an SWR monitor and miniature tuner in another Altoids tin.

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Here is the performance simulation (simulated with 5 Ohm coil resistances).

Foxx Construction Tip - Beware when you wind the three coils - the amount of wire supplied is very accurately measured. There WAS enough but only just. Be very careful not to waste any wire when you wind them. Kanga have said that they will supply more wire.

QSO update 29-10-00 just worked Tim G4ARI who was running 500mW. Thanks Tim!

What's in the box??

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Looks like a FOXX - the "key" is the bottom at the bottom right of the board

Inspired by my FOXX-3, I have invented "The Mint Box Challenge".

Incidentally, the FOXX has a couple of great ideas for Adventure Radio users. These are the use of a push button mounted on the board as a Morse key - ok the Morse is not great but it suffices. Also the use of board mounted presets instead of full sized controls - a good idea that I will be copying in some of my Adventure Radio kit. Thanks Kanga.

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