Collaborate Disseminate
The RCA CR-88 was a radio receiver made to work in top-secret government eavesdropping stations. As you might expect, these radios are top-of-the-line, performance-wise, at least when they are working …read more Continue reading Inside a 1940’s Spy Radio
An abiding memory for a teen fascinated by electronics and radio in the 1970s and 1980s is the proliferation of propaganda stations that covered the shortwave spectrum. Some of them …read more Continue reading Owning A ShortWave Radio Is Once Again A Subversive Activity
Modern radio receivers have a distinct advantage over the common early designs which I covered in my previous article. Most of the receivers you will have worked with over the past couple decades are designs by Edwin Armstrong; regenerative, superregenerative, or most commonly superheterodyne. These are distinguished by a few …read more
Continue reading Modern Radio Receiver Architecture: From Regenerative to Direct Conversion
When we build an electronic project in 2016, the chances are that the active components will be integrated circuits containing an extremely large amount of functionality in a small space. Where once we might have used an op-amp or two, a 555 timer, or a logic gate, it’s ever more common to use a microcontroller or even an IC that though it presents an analog face to the world does all its internal work in the digital domain.
There was a time when active components such as tubes or transistors were likely to be significantly expensive, and integrated circuits, if …read more
Continue reading Everyone Should Build At Least One Regenerative Radio Receiver