Build Your Own Transistor Radios: A Hobbyist's Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits
by: Ronald Quan
Abstract: A DIY guide to designing and building transistor radios. Create sophisticated transistor radios that are inexpensive yet highly efficient. Build Your Own Transistor Radios: A Hobbyist's Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits offers complete projects with detailed schematics and insights on how the radios were designed. Learn how to choose components, construct the different types of radios, and troubleshoot your work. Digging deeper, this practical resource shows you how to engineer innovative devices by experimenting with and radically improving existing designs. Build Your Own Transistor Radios covers: • Calibration tools and test generators • TRF, regenerative, and reflex radios • Basic and advanced superheterodyne radios • Coil-less and software-defined radios • Transistor and differential-pair oscillators • Filter and amplifier design techniques • Sampling theory and sampling mixers • In-phase, quadrature, and AM broadcast signals • Resonant, detector, and AVC circuits • Image rejection and noise analysis methods This is the perfect guide for electronics hobbyists and students who want to delve deeper into the topic of radio.
Full details
Table of Contents
- A. About the Author
- B. Preface
- C. Acknowledgments
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Calibration Tools and Generators for Testing
- 3. Components and Hacking/Modifying Parts for Radio Circuits
- 4. Building Simple Test Oscillators and Modulators
- 5. Low-Power Tuned Radio-Frequency Radios
- 6. Transistor Reflex Radios
- 7. A Low-Power Regenerative Radio
- 8. Superheterodyne Radios
- 9. Low-Power Superheterodyne Radios
- 10. Exotic or "Off the Wall" Superheterodyne Radios
- 11. Inductor-less Circuits
- 12. Introduction to Software-Defined Radios (SDRs)
- 13. Oscillator Circuits
- 14. Mixer Circuits and Harmonic Mixers
- 15. Sampling Theory and Sampling Mixers
- 16. In-Phase and Quadrature (IQ) Signals
- 17. Intermediate-Frequency Circuits
- 18. Detector/Automatic Volume Control Circuits
- 19. Amplifier Circuits
- 20. Resonant Circuits
- 21. Image Rejection
- 22. Noise
- 23. Learning by Doing
- A. Appendix 1: Parts Suppliers
- B. Appendix 2: Inductance Values of Oscillator Coils and Intermediate-Frequency (IF) Transformers
- C. Appendix 3: Short Alignment Procedure for Superheterodyne Radios
Tools & Media
Expanded Table of Contents
- A. About the Author
- B. Preface
- C. Acknowledgments
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Calibration Tools and Generators for Testing
- 3. Components and Hacking/Modifying Parts for Radio Circuits
- 4. Building Simple Test Oscillators and Modulators
- 5. Low-Power Tuned Radio-Frequency Radios
- 6. Transistor Reflex Radios
- 7. A Low-Power Regenerative Radio
- 8. Superheterodyne Radios
- 9. Low-Power Superheterodyne Radios
- 10. Exotic or "Off the Wall" Superheterodyne Radios
- 11. Inductor-less Circuits
- 12. Introduction to Software-Defined Radios (SDRs)
- 13. Oscillator Circuits
- 14. Mixer Circuits and Harmonic Mixers
- 15. Sampling Theory and Sampling Mixers
- 16. In-Phase and Quadrature (IQ) Signals
- 17. Intermediate-Frequency Circuits
- 18. Detector/Automatic Volume Control Circuits
- 19. Amplifier Circuits
- 20. Resonant Circuits
- 21. Image Rejection
- 22. Noise
- 23. Learning by Doing
- Update on the One-Transistor Superheterodyne Radio
- Comments on SDR 40-Meter Front-End Circuit
- Experimenting with Mixers and Using the Spectran Spectrum Analyzer Program
- Conducting Experiments on Op Amps and Amplifiers
- Experiments with a Resonant Circuit
- Thevenin-Equivalent Circuit
- Analyzing a Bridge Circuit
- Some Final Thoughts on the Book
- References
- A. Appendix 1: Parts Suppliers
- Oscillator Coils, Intermediate-Frequency (IF) Transformers, Audio Transformers
- Antenna Coils
- Variable Capacitors
- Crystal Earphones
- Passive Components, Resistors, Capacitors, Fixed-Valued Inductors
- Crystals
- Ceramic Resonators (~455 kHz)
- Ceramic Filters (~455 kHz)
- Transistors, Diodes, and Integrated Circuits
- Low-Noise Transistors and JFETs
- Loudspeakers
- B. Appendix 2: Inductance Values of Oscillator Coils and Intermediate-Frequency (IF) Transformers
- C. Appendix 3: Short Alignment Procedure for Superheterodyne Radios
Book Details
Title: Build Your Own Transistor Radios: A Hobbyist's Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Athens, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan, New Delhi, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto
Copyright / Pub. Date: 2013 McGraw-Hill Education
ISBN: 9780071799706
Authors:
Ronald Quan
is a member of SMPTE, IEEE, and AES. He designed wide-band FM detectors for an HDTV tape recorder at Sony Corporation, and a twice-color subcarrier-frequency (7.16-MHz) NTSC vector-scope for measuring differential phase and gain for Macrovision, where he was a principal engineer. Mr. Quan holds at least 70 U.S. patents in the areas of analog video processing, low-noise audio and video amplifier design, low-distortion voltage-controlled amplifiers, wide-band crystal VCOs, video monitors, audio and video IQ modulation, audio and video scrambling, bar code reader products, audio test equipment, and video copy protection.
Description: A DIY guide to designing and building transistor radios. Create sophisticated transistor radios that are inexpensive yet highly efficient. Build Your Own Transistor Radios: A Hobbyist's Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits offers complete projects with detailed schematics and insights on how the radios were designed. Learn how to choose components, construct the different types of radios, and troubleshoot your work. Digging deeper, this practical resource shows you how to engineer innovative devices by experimenting with and radically improving existing designs. Build Your Own Transistor Radios covers: • Calibration tools and test generators • TRF, regenerative, and reflex radios • Basic and advanced superheterodyne radios • Coil-less and software-defined radios • Transistor and differential-pair oscillators • Filter and amplifier design techniques • Sampling theory and sampling mixers • In-phase, quadrature, and AM broadcast signals • Resonant, detector, and AVC circuits • Image rejection and noise analysis methods This is the perfect guide for electronics hobbyists and students who want to delve deeper into the topic of radio.
