As a fresh radio amateur in the 80s, one looked at the complex multiband radios of the day with awe. I remember seeing the Atlas 210x, the Icom 720 and Signal One radios in various friends’ shacks. It was entirely out of one’s realm to imagine building such a general coverage transceiver in the home lab.
Devices are now available readily across the globe through online stores, manufacturers are more forthcoming with their data. Most importantly, online communties like the EMRFD’s Yahoo group, the QRP LABS and BITX20’s groups.io community etc have placed the tribal knowledge within the grasp of far flung builders like I am.
One knows that it was just a matter of breaking down everything into amplifiers, filters, mixers and oscillators, but that is just theory. The practice of bringing a radio to life is a perpetual ambition. The first signal that the sputters through ether, past your mess of wires into your ears and the first signal that leaps out into the space from your hand is stuff of subliminal beauty that is the rare preserve of the homebrewer alone.