Electronic – How does the PNP transistor in this IR receiver circuit work

CircuitLab allows you to simulate this:

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

Open the circuit, click on "simulate," and figure out how it works yourself! Note that I had to simulate the inductance of the speaker (important in this circuit) by inserting a series inductor, as CircuitLab didn't include this in the speaker model.

Separately, the reason the capacitor is connected to the speaker's "top" terminal, rather than ground, is that it needs to see the voltage drop across the speaker, which fluctuates with both how the speaker conducts, and how Q2 conducts; this is what keeps the oscillation going. If the capacitor was connected directly to ground, there would be a single click, and then it would be silent.

Specifically, when Q2 is open, the voltage across C1 will drop to 0 (it will discharge.) But, as C1 discharges, it turns from an isolator to a conductor (a discharged capacitor works a bit like a wire; a charged capacitor works a bit like an isolator.)

Looks like a self-oscillating converter, probably a primary winding, a feedback winding and a secondary winding (6 pins). It would be similar to this, but with many more turns on the secondary:

I think this is a blocking oscillator with the transformer primary in the emitter of the transistor and the feedback winding blocking the base voltage.

The transistor is probably a cheap high-current BJT such as an 8550 with a base resistor and nothing else. The blue capacitor and the brown film capacitor form a voltage doubler (there is room for parts for more multiplication, but they're not populated). The two resistors are to discharge the capacitor- one is a 22M and the other is a 20K. When they use the tripler configuration they probably use two 22M or a 22M and a 10M resistor. Th

The LED is just across the input power (after the tact switch) with a resistor in series.

These things have to make with BOM adding up to not many pennies, so everything is minimized. The output capacitor is probably being run at way over rated voltage, the transistor will probably burn out if you hold the switch down, the transformer insulation is unsuitable for anything but brief momentary operation. Minimalist, fully Muntzed, design philosophy.