I found a book as an E-book at the university library: Radio and Electronics Cookbook that was published by the Radio Society of Great Britain in 2001. I have skimmed through it briefly and it seems to cover both some radio theory and some interesting projects. I do have a lot of "maybe" and "should be" projects in my head (that I will cover in later blog posts) and now I think I decided, apart from getting the softrocks built (as they are already on my desk), I would like to build a hardware defined receiver. A very basic one to really try to understand how a radio works.
In this book, I found one called the "The Colt 80 m receiver" that I liked, because it´s built in modular steps and quite thoroughly explained. It starts with the audio amplifier and then adds mixer (NE602) and VFO to become a direct conversion receiver. The last part is to add an IF stage to become a superhet.
What worries me a bit is that I can´t find any reference to this design when I google it. Or maybe blogs and so on wasn´t that common 2001 and earlier or this design is named something else elsewhere? A bigger problem is the availabilty of parts. Variable capcitors to be used in a VFO can´t be bought new, but I´ve have asked around in the club and I think that will be solved.
Then there are some specific inductors from Toko:
- Toko KANK3334
- Toko KANK3333
- Toko YHCS11100AC (tuned inductor)
For the two first ones I have found a guide at the GQRP club (that I by the way have joined; Sprat is a great magazine), so I can make those inductors with toroids. But the last one, I have no clue. Any ideas someone? There´s also a part number for a crystal filter, but I think I can use another one for 455 kHz.
We will see if there will be a part 2.
