New England QRP Club : The Excitement is Building....

Hey!
Just decided to start designing and building my own tranciever, QRP of course... Right now im building the DC reciever backwards. I've heard a few suggestions of building backwards (AF amp to Detector or RF amp) and it really seems to be quite convenient. I decided to build it dead bug style ( Yup! the IC's do look like dead bugs... It's cute and sick in one.. well twisted little way. HIHI) and I must say, this is one of the neatest projects I've built this way, just looks so clean! I also decided to go on the wisdom of VE7CA in hist article about his homebrew transciever "Why re-invent the wheel?" so if I like a circuit I am going to use it, like the audio amp is the suggested circuit in the spec sheets for the LM386 IC and the mixer is the double balanced version in my QRP Notebook by W1FB (1989 edition... Jeez that was the year I was born...).

My goals are modest:
Something that works (Duh?)
Performs at least pretty good
Ability to make even better (Yeah.. thats right)
Low cost & adjustable

The included photo was take with my cell phone... yay great resolution! HIHI. It's of the completed audio amp and Mixer. This layaour is highly adjustable so I probably will add a filter and some better performing circuits later as I poke and prode through the building of this project!