{"id":2954,"date":"2012-06-16T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-16T01:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2012\/06\/16\/long-lost-varactor-receiver-found\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T14:19:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T04:19:00","slug":"long-lost-varactor-receiver-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2012\/06\/16\/long-lost-varactor-receiver-found\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Lost Varactor Receiver Found!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/HerringAid.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"227\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/HerringAid.png\" width=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"> <b><span style=\"font-size: large;\">SolderSmoke fans will recall that for a long time I have been looking for the radio magazine article that propelled me into a receiver construction project that failed and left me tech-traumatized. I tried to build a solid state receiver back in high school. All I remembered about it was that it was direct conversion and varactor-tuned. And that I couldn&#8217;t get it to work. I think the problem was in the oscillator. <\/span><\/b><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"> <b><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><br \/><\/span><\/b><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"> <b><span style=\"font-size: large;\">Well, I think I found it. Chuck Adams and the qrp-tech guys were talking about a receiver project and someone mentioned the old Herring Aid Five, a receiver companion to the famed Tuna Tin Two. That got me thinking. The time of publication was exactly right: July 1976. I had just graduated from high school. This morning I renewed my ARRL membership and then immediately accessed the QST archives. Sure enough, the Herring Aid Five is varactor-tuned. That has to be it. <\/span><\/b><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"> <b><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><br \/><\/span><\/b><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"> <b><span style=\"font-size: large;\">So this one is now definitely on my to-build list. I will finally get this receiver working. Sometimes projects take a long time&#8230; Thanks again to all those who helped me in this search. <\/span><\/b><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<p> Our book: &#8220;SolderSmoke &#8212; Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm\">http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a> Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke\">http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a> Our Book Store: <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20\">http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SolderSmoke fans will recall that for a long time I have been looking for the radio magazine article that propelled me into a receiver construction project that failed and left me tech-traumatized. I tried to build a solid state receiver back in high school. All I remembered about it was that it was direct conversion &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2012\/06\/16\/long-lost-varactor-receiver-found\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Long Lost Varactor Receiver Found!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-direct-conversion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2956,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions\/2956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}