I got a bunch of identically (but cryptically) marked crystals that I
wanted a ballpark idea about so I built the oscillator part of the Pixie
II (up to Q1) and put a scope on it. It was around 20MHz, so I grabbed
my HT and tuned around 20MHz to see if I could find it (this, by the
way, is why you should not borrow the lcd display from your frequency
counter for another project...). What I discovered was several signals
above 20MHz (eg 21.040) that only existed when the oscillator was on.
I assumed it was picking up something else and mixing it with 20MHz so
I tried to find the original signals at 1040kHz but I couldn't. The
"mixed" signals were very clear and strong. It was some kind of news
(shortwave?) in an Asian language.

Where else should I have looked for the base signal? ~41MHz would be
in the middle of a government band.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/