Eighty years ago, the SWL shown here was exploring the ether with her three-tube shortwave set, as featured in the February 1936 issue of Shortwave Craft magazine. It featured one stage of RF amplification with a 6L7 tube, a 6J7 serving as regenerative detector, and a 6C5 serving as audio amplifier. The article points out that the […]
True to our name here at OneTubeRadio.com, we frequently feature one tube radios. And more often than not, they are regenerative receivers. The regenerative receiver was popular in the early days of radio because it could deliver so much performance out of a simple circuit. The single tube, in addition to serving as the detector, […]
Amateur station licenses weren’t being issued during the war, but the FCC continued to conduct exams and issue operator licenses. And there was a big demand for operators, both in the military and commercially, so learning Morse Code would be an important skill in 1943, and the January and March, 1943, issues of Popular Mechanics carried companion […]
Nostalgia is nothing new, and today, we take a nostalgic look 35 years back at the November-December 1980 issue of Elementary Electronics. That magazine was itself taking a nostalgic look back at the early days of radio with a construction article for this one-tube regenerative receiver, similar to the circuits in use in the 1920’s. The […]
Ninety years ago, this young woman demonstrates the proper method for tuning a regenerative receiver. She is shown in the January 1925 issue of Radio News. The caption explains that the control on the left is tuning, and the one on the right controls regeneration. Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon
Fido is shown here assisting with the construction of this simple one-tube radio from the January 1947 issue of Popular Mechanics. The radio is a very simple regenerative receiver described as a “student set.” The tuning range is 550-1200 kHz, meaning that the top part of the AM broadcast band is cut off. The article notes […]
Wartime parts shortages were a major inspiration for the design of this short wave receiver from the January 1945 issue of Popular Mechanics. The lamp isn’t there for decoration; it’s one of the parts. The receiver used three identical tubes, the 6C5. It ran directly off house current. The three 6-volt filaments are run in […]
I found an interesting construction article for a one-tube regenerative receiver in the September 1950 issue of Boys Life magazine. (From this link, you’ll need to scroll down to page 56 to read the article.) The authors are listed as Fred Roden and Glenn A. Wagner, and it reports the receiver in use at Albany, […]
The plans for this unusually designed one-tube regenerative receiver appeared a hundred years ago this month in the May 1924 issue of Popular Mechanics. Nothing about the circuit, using a UV199 tube, is particularly remarkable, other than the way it’s put into effect. The main coil is stationary, but the antenna coil and ticker coil […]
We were sad to hear the news recently that MFJ Enterprises will be shutting down production on May 17, 2024. The company has long been a fixture in Amateur Radio, producing a wide variety of products, mostly station accessories, for the amateur market. Their products have the distinction of being functional and utilitarian, and usually reasonably […]