Dave Newkirk is the son of Rod Newkirk, the guy who wrote the inspirational “How’s DX?” column for QST for so many years. Dave is obviously a very prolific and proficient homebrewer himself. I really appreciate his comment on the High School receiver project. Thanks Dave.
Dave wrote on QRZ.com:
Rummaging around the net for such phrases as “TJ receiver” or variations that include AA1TJ and receiver returns no solid hits, but by following clues I found a/the article with schematic at https://hackaday.io/project/190327-high-schoolers-build-a-radio-receiver. That’s a well-thought-out design that’ll provide fun, fun, fun.
I think I have something like 8 homemade receivers available at the moment at W9BRD, tube-based and solid-state, regenerative and superhet. all told covering 160 through 17 meters (if I include my tube-based and solid-state converters), and about the same number of homemade transmitters. With some exceptions for particular on-air celebrations and events, commonly my entire station lineup is homemade from stem to stern, so to speak.
I’ve been building radio gear since 1968. Here’s some recent fun:
Zed thread covering the development of a converter-plus-regenerative-tuner combo that I came to call the “Super 3-in-9”:
https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?th…ceiver-using-one-9-pin-miniature-tube.897249/
Zed thread covering construction of my version of a coffee-can-based receiver/converter combo my father used for 15ish years as his main station receiver after beginning its construction in 1951ish “on a kitchen table in Hartford” while working at ARRL HQ:
https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?th…building-a-160-meter-coffee-can-regen.938709/
To which discussion our own @N2EY kindly posted the mid-1960s “How’s DX?” lead in which Dad laid out his station design/configuration/construction philosophy ( https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?th…0-meter-coffee-can-regen.938709/#post-7021505 ).
To us, commercial/mil/pro gear has been and always will be various shades of inspiring to fabulous, but only with homemade gear are we home.
A little Night Radio Romance at W9BRD, featuring the BRD-160CC 160-m regenerative receiver and converter (transmitter and antenna tuner not shown).