Customer Reviews

Radio Receiver Projects You Can Build

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book contains many projects but doesn't go into great detail on how they work, or why the circuits were designed the way they were. Suitable for anyone wanting to build a radio. Not aimed at designers, however. Covers crystal, direct conversion, superhet, and solar radios. Some with integrated circuits, some with vacuum tubes. Very little theory, just a simple hands-on construction guide.

I bought this book with expectations of building a few of the projects. That was a few years ago - and I still haven't. Something about this book just didn't enthuse me. Hey, I'm not lazy - I've completed many projects in the past - but I just can't get fired up about any of the ones in the book. I guess I'm more a 'tube' than 'transistor' kind of guy. Many of the components specified for projects are not impossible to get - but they are not easy to get either. All in all, I wish I had my $25 back.

This book has a lot of fun radio designs. It doesn't teach radio principles. I think it's for builders who want to fool around with some differrent ideas. I liked the tube regenerative radios. He mostly used 1S4 and 3S4 tubes which are inexpensive and their filaments can be run on a C-cell or two. For B+ he puts 2 or 3 or more cheap 9V batteries in series. He winds coils on plastic film canisters and uses easy-to-find components ... EXCEPT for the ZN414Z and the ZN416E. Fortunately the MK484 appears to be a replacement for the ZN414Z. So every design in the book is still doable. Neat ideas! AA1WW

I picked this up from the remainder bin and am glad I did not pay much for it.
The author wastes too much space on bits and pieces of cutting up scrap wood and such for mounting parts than on bulding the part of the radio that actually does something. What use is precise bending of scrap metal to form clips to hold wire? Most of these are are not the type of radio you would show off after building.
His coil winding instructions are annoyingly repetitive. (How many times does he need to tell the reader to hold the wire with tape or something while the coil dope/nail polish sets?) His instructions for the actual winding are poor - at one point (p.74)he instructs you to leave 4" of a 4 to 5 inch ferrite rod bare, bare of what? wire or tape? It is unclear. Winding diagrams show windings side by side, the text has the second winding being wound over the first.
There are poenty of pictures but most are simply to fill space, they do nothing to aid construction. (I do like the photos that show that he gets his mismatched brands bateries from the same junk box as his parts!)
It would have been nice if the author had used succesive projects, as they grew in complexity, to teach theory.
I'm not sure who this book was meant to appeal to. Those interested in learning some electronics/radio/RF theory or fundamentals will be dissapointed. Those interested in early (homebrew) radio and how radios have changed over time get nothing. Neither is there an attempt to give the experimenter building blocks to take further. There is no large final project to build for those with a real budding interest in what goes on inside a commercial radio. Based on the repetition it seems this is not intended to be a book that one works their way through, but rather a book that one picks up and starts anywhere.

I've been looking for older tube radio schematics for a long time. Finally I can build an old fashioned tube radio from scratch. This book gives you all the information you'll need. It's great, have fun with it I did. Just think no expensive kits to buy just use your own spare parts you have on hand.

Haven't read it fully yet, but there seems to be quite the gamut of different types of radios to build, and all generally simple in design. Am very much looking forward to trying a few of them out.

This is an old book printed in 1993. Since that time many of the parts that are used to build the projects are not commonly available 18 years later. A large number of the projects use the ZN414 chip which, on first glance in not available at Digikey, Jameco, or the Circuit Specialists. It does have some good building techniques and useful general information. Tab Books has some good information, but the writing quality usually is not as good as other technical publishers. Radio Receiver Projects You Can Build

The articles and construction details are very good but most of the radios are vacuum tube, there are only a few solid state receivers.