Sixty years ago, the November 1955 issue of Popular Electronics carried the plans for this little one-tube reflex receiver for the broadcast band.  With a very short antenna (just a few inches), the set was capable of loudspeaker volume thanks to the single tube being “reflexed.”  The single 6AU6 simultaneously amplified the RF and also served as a one-stage audio amplifier to drive the speaker.  The set used a 1N34 germanium diode as the detector, and a selenium rectifier, meaning that in the early days of radio, this would have been a three-tube set.

The author reported that the set picked up the Chicago stations from a hundred miles away.  The set was small enough to build into a wall or a piece of furniture, and instructions were provided to add a phono input or headphone output jack.

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