The January 1958 issue of Boys’ Life magazine carried the third part in a series about shortwave listening, and included the plans for the three-transistor shortwave receiver shown here. The construction article was authored by Howard McEntee, W2SI, who was also the designer of the magazine’s 1956 CONELRAD receiver.

The shortwave set covered 1.25 to 18.5 MHz with four plug-in coils, meaning that it could tune the top of the broadcast band, several shortwave broadcast bands, and the 160, 80, 40, and 20 meter ham bands.  It employed a 2N1114 as the regenerative detector, followed by two CK722‘s for audio amplification to drive a pair of headphones.  It was powered by four penlite cells, which were said to provide several hundred hours of use.

Tuning was accomplished with two variable capacitors, one for broad tuning, with another for bandspread for carefully tuning a crowded band.  A third variable capacitor was used to adjust regeneration.

The article cautioned that this set wasn’t necessarily for beginners.  It advised that those who had never built a radio before should start with a more simple set and then graduate to this one.  “Real care is needed in wiring, for a wrong connection in some parts could mean immediate ruin of over $10 worth of transistors, the finished job shoujld be checked and rechecked, before the power is turned on.”