Aaron ZL1AUN used his homebrew SolderSmoke Direct Conversion receiver in a 40 meter SSB contact with his fellow New Zealand radio amateurs. His transmitter was a modern commercial rig, but his receiver was the Direct Conversion receiver.
I think Aaron’s video is an excellent demonstration of how stable and useful this receiver really is.
The next step for many will be the construction alongside the DC receiver of a Double Sideband transmitter. You could make it with only the receiver PTO serving as the common stage. Just build another mixer, a mic amp, and an RF amp with low pass filter. Switch the DC voltage and the antenna from T to R and you will be on the air, on phone, fully homebrew.
Here is an article describing how I did this on 17 meters in the Azores in 2001:
https://www.gadgeteer.us/17METER.HTM
Here is the Doug DeMaw article in CQ magazine that got me started in homebrew DSB:
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-doug-demaw-article-that-got-me-into.html
For more information on this project, and for information on how you could build this receiver see:
Join the discussion – SolderSmoke Discord Server:
Documentation on Hackaday:
https://hackaday.io/project/
SolderSmoke YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@