Build Your Own Transistor Radios: A Hobbyist's Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits

I must admit that I came to this book somewhat math challenged. I tend to be more interested in a historical perspective. But having said that, Mr. Quan has written a book that somehow manages to cover all bases here. Using the AM radio as a context, starting with the most basic simple circuits, then building upon each concept, he manages to cover the history and development of the major types of circuits used for AM radio reception, and the math and theory behind each circuit building block, show plans and schematics with detailed parts lists and sources to not only construct several types of AM radios, but also to make your own test oscillators and modulators for developing and testing circuits under construction. He also has a section covering the details of other equipment needed, and some inexpensive ways to obtain it, to equip your "radio electronics experimentation lab". He goes on to discuss improvements to circuits and trade-offs in further development between performance, cost and power consumption giving you the chance to improve designs previously constructed and measure the improvements. All this is presented in a well illustrated, intuitive, entertaining, easy to grasp form, that actually manages to give a reasonably complete analog electronics education by covering the various building blocks of the humble AM transistor radio including power supplies, oscillators and amplifiers as well as everything else specific to an AM radio. If you spend any time with this book you will not only learn to build and design your own AM radio circuits, but you will be well on your way to understanding a lot of the theory behind all analog electronic design. Well done !

Nice book

I was an electronic hobbyist in the 1950’s and spent a lot of time studying and building AM radios with vacuum tubes. I abandoned the hobby in the early 1960’s, but, watched the development of transistor radios with interest until the late 1970’s when phase lock loop (PLL) circuits entered the market. Nothing from my experience 20 years earlier helped me with PLL. Retired now I have taken up electronics as a hobby again so I was thrilled to see Ronald Quan’s book described, on the cover, as “A Hobbyists Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits”. Chapter by chapter he describes the theory and circuitry of Low-Power Tuned Radio-Frequency Radios, Transistor Reflex Radios, A Low-Power Regenerative Radio, Exotic or “Off the Wall” Superhetrodyne Radios and ends with an Introduction to Software-Defined Radios (SDRs). His description of SDRs is the best I have read and he includes circuits for SDR AM front ends. Emotionally the first 176 pages of the book were like watching Emeril do a cooking show. He gives you a circuit with some clever twists and a few pages later “Kicks it up a notch” again, again and again. It is a thrill ride. Unfortunately, it all ends, on page 176, less than half way through the book when he announces “Well, this ends the first part of this book, which is geared more for the hobbyist to just build or experiment with radio circuits.” The next 241 pages are filled with theory, formulas and trigonometric identities. On page 324 Mr. Quan reveals his perspective on what he has been writing since page 176 when he says “Analyzing the common-emitter amplifier in Figure 19-11 will be done a little bit differently from most college courses…” A college course. The cover says “A Hobbyist’s Guide…” Mr. Quan gets back to fun stuff in the last chapter titled “Learn by doing”. I wish he had skipped the college course and given us some PLL circuits. He could also have developed circuits around chips like the MK484 and TDA 1572 which are available from his list of suppliers. The first 176 pages are easily worth the price of the book, I only wish he had made better use of the rest of them.

An excellent book to learn the ins and outs of basic radio receiver theory, including amplifiers, both Radio Frequency and Audio, varying types of tuning setups, proper handling of the Intermediate Frequency section and so on. Several projects for construction and experimentation. However, it's not for the very beginner, the theory is accessible but not very elementary and the construction and explanations of operations are very technical and detailed. Perfect for the intermediate hobbyist with an interest in learning the ins and outs of AM radio reception that will generalize to other types of receivers. Just by switching out a couple of components you can access Medium Wave and some Short Wave signals as well. One warning though, the schematic diagrams are very difficult to read on a regular kindle, are somewhat more accessible on a tablet and are very detailed on a regular computer screen. The graphics themselves are of very good quality but are usually a little dense.

A few brief comments. 1) This book contains a lot of interesting information with plenty of practical examples. Even as a seasoned electrical engineer and licensed amateur radio enthusiast, I've discovered tidbits here that I didn't know or hadn't considered before. 2) To me, the book reads a bit more like a collection of information than a linear work with beginning, middle, and end. If you regard it as a reference work, then this doesn't really matter. On the other hand, I'm not certain that an absolute beginner would fare very well. Note that this is not necessarily a point of criticism, as no book can be all things to all people. I just thought I would share that impression. 3) I understand the desire of publishers to control costs (and thereby make their products more affordable), but the pages in this book are so thin that text and diagrams from one side of each page bleeds through to the opposing side. The muddling effect this produces, combined with a thin, almost gray, type font can make reading unpleasant. This is the only reason that I did not award five stars. All that said, I am still pleased with my purchase and would not discourage anyone from adding this book to their library.

I have built three radios from this book – TRF radio from page 57, the regenerative radio from page 90 and 8-transistor superheterodyne radio from page 105. I used crystal earphone for the TRF and regenerative radio, and they worked amazingly well. Similarly, I was really surprised how well the commercial 8-transistor superheterodyne radio worked. I used a speaker for the output, and I could hear several AM bands, definitely a lot more and lot more clearly as compared to the earlier two I built, and felt really proud showing off to my friends, because the audio output quality matched closely with the commercial AM radios. I used copper clad board for these, similar to the one in the cover of the page; was difficult at first, but got easier to layout and solder the circuit when I got to the third one. It is definitely easier to build them using copper clad board. Besides building these circuits, I also love the theoretical explanations of several concepts in the book. Sure, it’s focused more towards practical purpose of how to build things like amplifiers, oscillators, IF circuits but I believe the concepts are well explained in a nice and simple way. Being an electrical engineering student, I find these explanations much more helpful and insightful as to the few analog and RF circuits textbooks I have read. I highly recommend this book, and building the circuits and seeing them work is great fun.

Just right amount of theory and practical info for someone experienced with electronics to learn more about radio receivers. Good intro to SDR concepts. Good addition to library for Amateur extra class licensed operators, or those looking to become one. Would like to see a second volume by Mr. Quan covering transmitters some day. This book is well suited for the experienced electronic hobbyist, would also see it helping an undergrad EE student as well. While there are some chapters in second half of book with math, the pure hobbyist can take those chapters on faith and press on. The student can use these as supplement to get an alternative explanation of concepts more grounded in practical experience than found in most EE textbooks.

Excellent book… However, you need the knowledge, experience and test equipment to build these radios (especially the superhets). Mr. Quan gives the reader a low cost approach to build test equipment using digital chips and while these may be okay for some folks with previous experience, I strongly recommend at least the following equipment: 1) Some type of spectrum analyzer with marker capability and a low noise amplifier or probe on the front end connector that allows you to “sniff” signals without loading to troubleshoot the circuits, 2) A RF signal generator capable of putting out signals in the range you are attempting to tune for, and 3) Some type of component measuring equipment with mini grabbers to attach to the components and give you at least a reliable way to measure capacitance and inductance (such as a Sencore LC102), and, of course, a decent DVM (with 10Mohm input impedance minimum) and adjustable power supply. Otherwise, it will be a very frustrating and time consuming experience; especially when you order adjustable capacitors (caps) online and attempt to wind an antenna transformer or other coil or caps from a junk radio with your cap to the resonant response of the signal you are attempting to build since you have to tune the antenna and oscillator response separately for the best frequency response possible for the superhets or others. Yes, the book has some sections that could be improved, such as clearly labeling some connections on the schematic for the transformer connections on the superhet schematics (took a little thinking to figure out). It would also have been nice to have more pictures of Mr. Quan’s radios since there’s only a few for reference (that’s why I gave it 4 stars). I should also point out that no one in the comments has mentioned that the 42IF100 coil VC1 osc and ground connections are mislabeled in the book on pages 100 (Fig 8-5B), 105 (Fig 8-6B) and 108 (Fig 8-7). If you wire it per the “bottom pin view” schematic in the book, the first oscillator will never work. The inductance is too low between pins 1 and 2. I had to reverse the wires on the VC1 osc and the ground connection to make it work. You can confirm by checking the back section Appendix 2 (Pg. 459) where the transformer pins with inductance values are listed. You will notice the inductance between pins 1 and 2 are 0.6uH which will not work. You need at least 300 uH or so (inductance between pins 2 & 3). To be successful with these projects, the builder needs to have a level of practical circuit building skills & soldering (especially on a ground plane) which goes beyond building circuits on solderless quick proto boards (the ones that allow you to plug in & remove wires for low frequency digital circuits) or simple DC projects. If you use these solderless boards, it is almost guaranteed they wont work as intended because of the stray capacitance on these boards. I wouldn’t even attempt it. At a minimum, to make these circuits work you need to build them on either a point to point solder (vector) board or a copper clad for the ground plane (which is critical) and wire the other points in the air (like the author) as I did from the 4 transistor radio schematic. You don’t need a layout (only the schematic). That's what makes it fun. Then, once you have a working prototype, you can attempt to start laying it out if you so choose. For those who say they can’t build without a layout-note that from pictures, the author built some of these by wiring the parts in the air which explains why he does not have a layout as shown on Pg. 122, Fig. 9-5. The radio on Pg. 123 (Fig. 9-6) was built using point to point (on a vector board) which also doesn’t require a layout (the layout is the picture). In addition, you don’t have to worry too much about high frequency (close to microwave) PC board effects on these circuits. It would have been nice if the author had included the layout. All you need is the schematic and these circuits will work if you build them on copper clad boards without a layout just as the author’s pictures on the cover or pages 122 & 123. As of this writing, I haven’t tried building the other TRF or Reflex radios. On the pictures from my first prototype, the red and black mini grabbers are for the power supply and the 2 red mini grabbers are for the audio connections. The audio circuit was only built on the board up to the audio driver circuit and the 2 red leads are attached to the audio driver transformer secondary (for a total of 3 P/N 2N3904 transistors) for which a external audio amp is being used. Notice most of the connections are in the air. If you don’t build it up to the audio driver, there won’t be sufficient signal to drive an external audio amplifier. The potentiometer (pot) on the side of the board is the audio control for the driver circuit.The antenna is also very important. The test antenna (pictured) works best when I put my hand on it. I’ll be experimenting with adding some extra wire and other antennas with bigger ferrites in the parts bin that need to be rewound (have lower inductance).

A small gem here for anyone interested in the topic. Am keeping the book.

The book is limited to am radios but is useful all the same. I thoroughly recommend it.

I don't have the knowledge to understand most of the book but I am sure It is a reference for real electronicians. Some very good informations for beginners like me.

Excelente livro.

THe book is a present to my son, so I didn't read it thoroughly but only had a cursory glance at it. Anyhow, it looks to me that the book contains a lot of information and the author did a great job at balancing simple and complex circuits, projects and experiments, practice and theory. I find particularly appreciable that besides presenting complete projects, the author takes the time to guide step by step the reader toward a deeper theoretical insight, and to suggest experiments to personally verify in practice the principles put at work in the different design. Much better than the "solder the kit parts and switch it on" approach that seems to dominate.