{"id":3540,"date":"2010-01-13T03:44:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T16:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2010\/01\/13\/aa1tj-reggies-rule-diode-amps-qrp-to-the-max\/"},"modified":"2010-01-13T03:44:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T16:44:00","slug":"aa1tj-reggies-rule-diode-amps-qrp-to-the-max","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2010\/01\/13\/aa1tj-reggies-rule-diode-amps-qrp-to-the-max\/","title":{"rendered":"AA1TJ: Reggies Rule! Diode Amps! QRP to the Max!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Whenever I find myself in need of some radio-inspiration, an e-mail from Mike, AA1TJ, seems to pop up in my inbox. This morning’s message and the associated video (above) were especially inspirational. <\/span>Mike was e-mailing Steve, WA1HFF.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hi Steve,<\/span>
Thanks for the message and the great QSO! I was running my one transistor transceiver that I call the Reggie. You can read about it on my webpage at<\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/mjrainey.googlepages.com\/reggie<\/span>
<\/a>
My antenna is nothing to write home about; just an end-fed half-wave wire bent into an “EL” at 35 feet.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve made just over 240 contacts with my Reggie in a little more than a year’s time; working 19 states. My best (and only) real DX was the Bahamas. All of these contacts were made with no receiver gain on this end; just a pair of diodes fed by a one-transistor BFO, and onto the headphones.<\/span><\/p>\n

A couple of fellows have built their own Reggies, so you might run into one on 80m now and then. I’ve made three Reggie to Reggie QSOs thus far.<\/span><\/p>\n

Steve, last night I was trying something new; I ran a loudspeaker from an audio amplifer connected to my Reggie. What’s unusual is that my audio amplifer was made from three, common power supply rectifiers (1N5401’s). I’m not kidding! It’s a nearly forgotten circuit from 1954 that I (re)stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago. It uses the phenomenon of PN junction charge-storage to produce amplification.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week I used two diode gain stages for a total power gain of 48dB to drive my headphones. Yesterday, I added a third diode gain-stage and connected it to a loudspeaker for shack-filling audio volume.<\/span><\/p>\n

I made a video of last night’s setup (the same setup I worked you with). You can see it at<\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3DA07A6BLDg<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks again for the nice contact last night, Steve. You were armchair copy here! :o)<\/span><\/p>\n

Best wishes,<\/span>
Mike, AA1TJ<\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s a question for Mike: Can you build that kind of amplifier with homebrew point-contact diodes? If so, you’d be opening up the possibility of a homebrew solid state receiver with homebrew solid state devices. Oh man, this stuff makes me feel like such an APPLIANCE OPERATOR. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever I find myself in need of some radio-inspiration, an e-mail from Mike, AA1TJ, seems to pop up in my inbox. This morning’s message and the associated video (above) were especially inspirational. Mike was e-mailing Steve, WA1HFF. Hi Steve,Thanks for the message and the great QSO! I was running my one transistor transceiver that I … Continue reading “AA1TJ: Reggies Rule! Diode Amps! QRP to the Max!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,108,85,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aa1tj","category-crystal-radio","category-minimalist-radio","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540","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=3540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}