AM

Receiv
er

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Circuit : Andy Collinson

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Description
This is a compact three transistor, regenerative receiver with fixed
feedback. It is similar in principle to the ZN414 radio IC which is now
replaced by the MK484. The design is simple and sensitivity and
selectivity of the receiver are good.

Circuit Notes
All general purpose transistors should work in this circuit, I used three
BC549 transistors in my prototype. The tuned circuit is designed for
medium wave, but the circuit will work up to much higher frequencies
if a different tuning coil and capacitor are used. I used a ferrite rod
and tuning capacitor from an old radio which tuned from
approximately 550 - 1600kHz. Q1 and Q2 form a compound transistor
pair featuring high gain and very high input impedance. This is
necessary so as not to unduly load the tank circuit. Q1 operates in
emitter follower, Q2 common emitter, self stabilizing bias is via the
120k resistor and the tuning coil. As Q2 operates in common emitter
its base voltage will be a Vbe drop higher than ground or about 0.71V
in my test sample. The voltage at Q1 base will be this Vbe drop plus
the voltage drop across the 1k resistor and Q1's own Vbe drop, this
amounted to 1.34V from base to ground in my test circuit. For audio
amplifiers, Q2 collector would be biased near half supply voltage,
however the input signal levels at RF are tiny, typically 50uV appearing
across the coil being amplified by Q2 and being about 5mV RF across
the 2k2 load resistor.

The 120k resistor provides regenerative feedback,between Q2 output

and the tank circuit input and its value affects the overall performance
of the whole circuit. Too much feedback and the circuit will become
unstable producing a "howling sound". Insufficient feedback and the
receiver becomes "deaf". If the circuit oscillates,then R1's value may
be decreased; try 68k. If there is a lack of sensitivity, then try
increasing R1 to around 150k. R1 could also be replaced by a fixed
resistor say 33k and a preset resistor of 100k. This will give
adjustment of sensitivity and selectivity of the receiver.

Transistor Q3 has a dual purpose; it performs demodulation of the RF

carrier whilst at the same time, amplifying the audio signal. Audio level
varies on the strength of the received station but I had typically 10-40
mV, this is audio voltage, not RF signal level. This will directly drive
high impedance headphones or can be fed into a suitable amplifier.

Antenna and Tuning Coil

The tuning coil, L1 can be salvaged from an old AM receiver, or to
make your own wind about 50 to 60 turns of 26 SWG enamel coated
copper wire over a 3/8 inch ferrite rod about 3 inches long. This will
create a tuning inductor of about 200uH. AM stations are directional so
rotating the rod (or whole receiver) should allow nulling of some
signals whilst boosting others.
If you are in an area of weak reception then an external antenna may
be required. Wind about 4 or 5 turns (indicated as 4 or 5 T on the
schematic) of 26 SWG wire onto the ferrite rod, close to the main
winding and connect one end to a cold water tap or ground connection.
Use several feet of flexible wire as an antenna.

Tuning Range
The frequency coverage or tuning range is controlled by L1 and VC1. If
VC1 is fully meshed (closed) then its capacitance will be about 500pF.
The resonant frequency is given by:

where F is frequency in hertz, C capacitance in Farads and L the

inductance in Henry's. With a meshed 500pF variable capacitor and
200uH coil the lowest frequency works out to be:

When the vanes are open a small capacitance is still present (about
40pF). The coil connections add a slight amount of stray capacitance
which may be 7 or 8pF. With 48pF capacitance and a 200uH coil, the
highest frequency will be about 1624kHz. Some variable capacitors,
have built in trimmers to adjust the highest frequency. For any coil
and capacitor that tunes too high, a 50pF trimmer may be added in
parallel with VC1 to control the highest tuneable frequency.

Tuning Coil for 500 to 1700KHz

The coil details below were kindly submitted and tested by David from
Germany and tunes 500 - 1700kHz with a 500pF capacitor.
Construction is shown below 35 turns of 32 SWG enamel covered wire
are wound 30mm from one end of a 10mm diameter ferrite rod. Now a
paper sleeve about 20mm wide is looped around the ferrite rod. The
coil is continued winding a further 40 turns, the start of the 36th turn
being approximately 50 mm from the same end of the ferrite rod on
the paper sleeve see image below.

The MW coil described above results in an inductance of approximately

200uH. If coupled with a 500pF capacitor (full mesh) will tune to about
500kHz and open mesh (about 43pF) tunes to 1700KHz. This covers
the top part of the MW band used in North America and some
European Pirate stations. If desired a LW coil can also be made on the
same rod, this is 330 turns of 32SWG wire starting 70 mm from the
same end of the ferrite rod.

Construction
All connections should be short, a veroboard or tagstrip layout are
suitable. The tuning capacitor has fixed and moving plates. The
moving plates should be connected to the "cold" end of the tank
circuit, this is the base of Q1, and the fixed plates to the "hot end" of
the coil, the junction of R1 and C1. If connections on the capacitor are
reversed, then moving your hand near the capacitor will cause
unwanted stability and oscillation.

Finally here are some voltage checks from my breadboard

prototype.This should help in determining a working circuit:-
All measurements made with a fresh 9volt battery and three BC109C
transistors with respect to the battery negative terminal.

Q1 (b) 1.31V
Q2 (b) 0.71V
Q2 (c) 1.34V
Q3 (b) 0.62V

Q3 (c) 3.87V

Finished Receiver
A finished receiver made on veroboard is shown below. This one is
built by David in Germany and has received all medium wave stations
in David's locality.
More of David's radio work can be seen in my Pics section in the
Practical Pages.

PCB Layout
The following single sided PCB layout was created with Kicad, a free
open source schematic and PCB drafting program. Its available for
both windows and linux, the image below is a 3D (enlarged) view of
the component side. The copper layer (solder side) is the dark green
layer on the bottom of the board.
The top view (component side) of the PCB board is shown below. This
is without the 3D components, the silk screen (drawings on the
component side) allow for size of physical components.

The image below is an actual size (1:1) copy of the copper layer. Note
that this is reverse so the veropins appear now on the left hand side at
the top. Remember that this is the lower (solder) side, by viewing the
top image you should be able to match up the positions of all
components.
Finally you may not like my layout and prefer to create your own. The
follwing am_rec.zip file, contains the schematic, component list and
pcbnew diagram in one convenient zip file.

Download all files for kicad am_rec.zip

More Construction Tips

The following tips come from Austin Hellier in Queensland, Australia
and may assist with building this project. Generally speaking, matrix
board construction (spread out a bit) seems best. Recently, when I ran
out of it, I was forced to use an 8 x 2 way tag strip arrangement,
which suffered from several problems. Feedback howls and
'motorboating' were prominent until I moved the tuning coil and
capacitor apart, but even then, there were still some feedback
problems, as I also used a 100k 'A' tapered pot as the feedback
control. I think that there's probably too much stray capacitance with
this method of construction. also, some of the longer (180mm) ferrite
rods of better quality material, seem to cause this overloading, as they
tend to generate a larger, more powerful EM field around the rod.
Smaller rods will probably work better with the more compact plastic
boxes or cases that constructers tend to use.
 Finished Receiver by Austin Hellier

More of Austin's radio work can be seen in my RF Pics section in the

Practical Pages.

Reducing C1 from a 0.1uF cap to a smaller 0.047uF cap helped a lot,

but the final 'fixit' occurred with the placement of the removed 0.1uF
cap across the c and e terminals of transistor Q2. These and the above
methods have allowed me to fix the two most recent AM receivers that
I made last week, with no residual side effects at all. Both units can
receive ten out of eleven local AM stations here in Brisbane,
Queensland, Australia, and with all parts new, cost around $12 to $15
AUD, depending on which shops you buy them at.

When I was down south in Wollongong some years ago, I made up my

very first 'AM Receiver' cct, and picked up stations 1ZB and 2ZB,
across the Tasman in New Zealand! If I use this circuit with a loop
antenna of any appreciable size, I can also pick up 4RK up in
Rockhampton (I live in Brisbane myself,) and 531 AM, a NSW radio
station down near Coffs Harbour - quite a few kilometres in either
direction. Station frequencies and locations for Brisbane and the rest of
Queensland can be found at www.ausradiostations.com.
Austin's Homepage also has some nice radio projects.

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Am transmitter

AM Transmitter

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Circuit : Andy Collinson

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Description
An AM voice transmitter with variable tuning. The antenna circuit is
also tuned and transmits via a long wire antenna. Please Note. It is
illegal to transmit on the AM wavebands in most countries, as such this
circuit is shown for educational purposes only.
Notes
Please read the disclaimer on this site before making any transmitter
circuit. It is illegal to operatea radio transmitter without a license in
most countries. This circuit is deliberately limited in power output but
will provide amplitude modulation (AM) of voice over the range 500kHz
to 1600kHz with values shown. You can input values in the calculator
below, remember to change drop down box to picofarads for
capacitance and microhenries for the coil. The coil is fixed at 200uH,
the capacitor values can be varied and resonant frequency found by
using the calculator below.

Tuned Circuit Resonant Frequency Calculator

Top of Form
 Capacitan Mic rof arads
ce:
Inductanc Henr ies
e:
Resonant
Hertz
Frequency
:

Bottom of Form

Coil Data
If winding your own coil then you may find Martin E Meserve page very
helpful:
Single Layer Air Core Inductor Design

An alternative is to use a toroid core of appropriate material. Toroid's

come in different sizes and colours, see the sample below.

A T130-2 core requires approximately 137 turns of 36 SWG wire.

Mike Yancey has a very useful Toroid calculator on his webpage, link
below:
Toroid Calculator

Circuit Notes
The circuit is in two parts, a microphone pre-amplifier built around Q1
and an RF oscillator circuit (Q2). The oscillator is a standard Hartley
oscillator which is tunable. Tank circuit L1 and C1 control frequency of
oscillation, the power in the tank circuit limited via emitter resistor R1.
The transmitter output is taken from the collector, L2 and C2 form
another tuned tank circuit and help match the antenna. L1,L2, C1 and
C2 may be salvaged from an old AM radio if available. The antenna
should be a length a wire about 10 feet or more. In the schematic I
have shown coaxial cable to be wired to the "longwire" antenna, the
outer coax shield returned to ground. Ground in this case is a cold
water pipe, however even without a ground and coax cable a signal
should still be possible.
L2 and C2 not only help match the antenna to the transmitter, but also
help remove harmonics and spurious emissions in the transmitter
circuit caused by non linearity in the transistors.

Q2 needs regenerative feedback to oscillate and this is achieved by

connecting the base and collector of Q2 to opposite ends of the tank
circuit which is achieved by C4. C3 ensures that the oscillation is
passed from collector, to emitter, via the internal base emitter
resistance of the transistor, back to the base again.

Emitter resistor R1 has two important roles in this circuit. It ensures

that the oscillation will not be shunted to ground via the very low
internal emitter resistance, re of Q2, and secondly raises input
impedance so that the modulation signal will not be shunted.

Q1 is wired as a common emitter amplifier, C7 decoupling the emitter

resistor and realizing full gain of this stage. Bias of this stage is
controlled by R4,R5 and R3. The microphone is an electret condenser
type microphone, R7 setting operating current of the ECM and C6
providing DC blocking. The amount of modulation is controlled by the
10k preset resistor PR1 which is also the collector load. The preamp
stage is decoupled by R6, C8 and C10. This ensures no high freqency
feedback from the oscillator gets into the audio stage. Some
electrolytics capacitors have a high impedance at radio frequencies,
hence the use of C10, a 10n ceramic to bypass any oscillator
frequencies.

WARNING: Transmitting on the UK Domestic AM band

is illegal in the UK, please see the general disclaimer.
In some countries however low power may be
permissible, but consult with the appropriate
authorities first. This circuit is shown for educational
purposes only.

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