{"id":8692,"date":"2024-02-15T10:36:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T23:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2024\/02\/15\/more-inspiring-mail-another-first-ever-receiver-was-homebrew\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T18:01:42","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T08:01:42","slug":"more-inspiring-mail-another-first-ever-receiver-was-homebrew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2024\/02\/15\/more-inspiring-mail-another-first-ever-receiver-was-homebrew\/","title":{"rendered":"More Inspiring Mail! Another “First Ever Receiver was Homebrew”"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n
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Frank’s Lowfer Beacon Receiver<\/span><\/div>\n
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It was great to hear from someone else who, like Scott KQ4AOP, heard his very first signals on a homebrew receiver. That is a really wonderful way to start. Frank’s first receiver was built around the NE602 chip. I had trouble understanding this IC but I finally cracked the code: <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

https:\/\/soldersmoke.blogspot.com\/2021\/11\/how-to-understand-ne-602-and-gilbert.html <\/i><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

The picture that Frank sent is of a more recent project, this one a Lowfer receiver that picks up signals from beacons. <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

————————-<\/b><\/p>\n

Hello Bill, <\/b><\/p>\n

I just wanted to message you and tell you I really enjoyed your book Soldersmoke. I’ve been listening to the podcast as well. On the latest one you mentioned a fellow who heard his first ham radio signals on a homebrew receiver, and that’s how it was for me as well! There were lots of articles about using the NE602 in the electronics magazines back in the day. I put one of the circuits together and it worked pretty smoothly… I eventually got my ham radio licence (KC8JJL) sometime in the 90’s. The first time I met a ham was when I showed up to take the test! <\/b><\/p>\n

I don’t do much transmitting these days but I still love to listen and tinker. Here’s a picture of a direct conversion LF receiver I put together… It uses an NE602 and is varactor tuned. It only covers from around 300Khz to just over 400khz but there are still a few beacons I can hear in MI and WI. <\/b><\/div>\n

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Frank James<\/b><\/div>\n

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Frank’s Lowfer Beacon Receiver It was great to hear from someone else who, like Scott KQ4AOP, heard his very first signals on a homebrew receiver. That is a really wonderful way to start. Frank’s first receiver was built around the NE602 chip. I had trouble understanding this IC but I finally cracked the code: https:\/\/soldersmoke.blogspot.com\/2021\/11\/how-to-understand-ne-602-and-gilbert.html … Continue reading “More Inspiring Mail! Another “First Ever Receiver was Homebrew””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,103,211],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beacon","category-knack-stories","category-ne602"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8692","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8694,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8692\/revisions\/8694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}