All my radios play FM radio stations that have a frequency response up to 15kHz and I do not play the awfully muffled (up to only 3kHz) sounds on AM stations. Also, FM radios do not play the amplitude modulations of pops and clicks heard on AM radios.
Years ago I played cassette tapes with a frequency response up to about 13.5kHz.

I mostly listen to FM radio music but sometimes I listen to an AM radio station for news (is that highway closed again?) and weather.

 

some books:

Solid State Design For The Radio Amateur 1986
by American Radio Relay League 1986
https://archive.org/details/SolidStateDesignForTheRadioAmateur1986

ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs
You can get a used one, even 1999 or so.

Build Your Own Transistor Radios: A Hobbyist's Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits
by Ronald Quan
https://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Transistor-Radios-High-Performance/dp/0071799702

 

Hello,

The archive has some ARRL books for download:
https://archive.org/details/opensource?query=arrl&sort=-publicdate

Bertus

 

All my radios play FM radio stations that have a frequency response up to 15kHz and I do not play the awfully muffled (up to only 3kHz) sounds on AM stations. Also, FM radios do not play the amplitude modulations of pops and clicks heard on AM radios.
Years ago I played cassette tapes with a frequency response up to about 13.5kHz.

I mostly listen to FM radio music but sometimes I listen to an AM radio station for news (is that highway closed again?) and weather.

Get into the modern. My normal home work radio is a HackRF One operated by gqrx.
https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/one/


To the OP. building that first radio is a blast. Welcome to the world of radio.

 

A few years ago I bought Ronald Quan's book about AM radios and it is quite well written and with good practical details.

I heard about him when he did an interview with Chris Gammel and David Jones on the podcast The Amp Hour. The link below contains the interview and a link to the book for sale.
https://theamphour.com/the-amp-hour-133-tenacious-transistor-teacher/

Good luck in your journey!

 

I had the deep honor of using and working on the old R-390 AM receivers at our Navy radio shack. What joy those tube monsters were to completely realign after some bozo jacked one up.

 

The simple class-A amplifier in post #14 has its transistor smoking and burning out.
Its input impedance is only 22 ohms so it needs an LM386 power amplifier to drive it.
I fixed its bad distortion by increasing its current which made it extremely hot.

So is it possible to make a push pull class B amplifier?(as in one which is fairly efficient if I build it,if it's not I'll have to use an IC)

Another unrelated doubt-I live about 20km( 12 miles) from an AM station. What antenna(length) should I use and how much power can i expect?

 

There are many class-AB transistor amplifier designs available. They draw a low power supply current at idle (about 10mA to 20mA) but the distorted and overloaded class-A amplifier draws 250mA at 9V all the time even when not playing.

We do not know which radio circuit you will make. Most will need a long wire antenna and an earth ground.
An LM386 IC amplifier or a transistor class-AB amplifier output power is about 1/2W into an 8 ohms speaker when powered from 9VDC. 5W of output sounds twice as loud. 5W needs a 22V to 24V power supply which is too much for an LM386 IC.

 

Ok thanks a lot everyone. This is the first place I have actually recieved help regarding radios

 

Ok thanks a lot everyone. This is the first place I have actually recieved help regarding radios

AAC is the place to be. There is no other place like it!

 

yeah radio is pretty magical. I still have yet to get my head wrapped around frequency vs time domain. For some reason I just cannot get that to click. Carrier frequencies, fourier tranforms, side channels. RF is truly black magic. Spooky action at a distance.

 

yeah radio is pretty magical. I still have yet to get my head wrapped around frequency vs time domain. For some reason I just cannot get that to click. Carrier frequencies, fourier tranforms, side channels. RF is truly black magic. Spooky action at a distance.

Unfortunately the conventional way electronics is taught with bad concepts and misconceptions about electricity and how electrical energy propagates in simple circuits with current only leads to bad first impressions about RF being black magic instead of the default method for all electrical energy movements. Think about energy, not charge or current as the basis for your understanding when doing circuit theory equations.

https://www.physicsclassroom.com/cl...on-Misconceptions-Regarding-Electric-Circuits