In 1967, the publishers of Electronics Illustrated and Mechanix Illustrated presented this little one-tube receiver in a publication entitled Practical Electronics.
The receiver tuned the AM broadcast band, amateur bands, or shortwave broadcast with the use of plug-in coils wound on the bases of old octal tubes. It used a dual-triode 12AT7 tube. One half served as the regenerative detector, with the other half serving as an audio amplifier. It used an isolation transformer, making the set relatively safe to use with 120 volts.
It was set up mostly as a low-cost starter receiver for the ham, as most of the coil data was for the ham bands. However, it would also make a good SWL receiver, and coil data was given for the 31 meter broadcast band.
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This website is extremely radio-inspiring to me. Old articles on many simple facets of the Radio world of the past are still full of simple and intriguing ideas to play with today … Thanks for these ! Cris, IZ3CQI
I built one of these. Couldn’t afford the specified mini-box to house, so my dad and I built our own from a piece of discarded stovepipe metal. Scrounged many of the electronic parts from broken TVs.
It worked great with a 50 foot long wire antenna.
Soy de México y saque este diagrama en 2008 y lo construí teniendo una buena resección en AM y ondas cortas es un muy buen radio experimental para iniciar a construir radios, saludos desde Ocotlán Jalisco México.
I built this when I was 15 years old. worked really good. I did not use a transformer as I could not afford one. It’s dangerous but you can do it. also you can use the same setup to transmit. you need to switch to a grid resistor from the coil top winding and a few other modifications and you have a transceiver. To be honest with you I enjoyed this unit so much I want to build it again. I’m 64 years old now. I would like to write an article on it. I would show my modifications. The plug in coils are great but I think need a little help. the broadcast band coil needs more turns than 80. Its closer to 100. 80 was not enough. you need right at 240 uh to get to .54 MHz with a 365 of variable capacitor. adding more taps were helpful. I also would use a lm386 IC in place of the audio portion of the 12AT7 and use the portion of the 12AT7 for an rf preamp. You could just wire up a computer amplified speaker just as well. but Unless you’ve done this before, word of caution there are high voltages present and modifications would need to be made to adapt the circuit. There are so many things you can do to this circuit. It can be turned into a transceiver for the 160-190 KHz band or ham band. I use to use this circuit modified as a pirate am transmitter. 1 watt. it was fun. back in the 70s.