Hello,

I would like to get started with RF design. I don't have any official education in electronics but I do understand analog electronics pretty well. Everything from Ohm's Law to Op-amps I pretty much understand. But I'm no super genius.

I would like to know if anyone has any good ideas on how to get started. I have been looking around on AARL sites and some hamradio Youtube channels and I know some of the basics now, but if you asked me to build an AM receiver from scratch, I wouldn't know where to start.

Any good projects/curriculum to get started with? Books? Website?

Thanks.

 

Hello,

Did you already have a look at my RF related links ?

Bertus

 

The traditional way is to build a crystal set for the AM broadcast band. There are several web sites which can provide you more than all-you-need to get started. Consider also joining an amateur radio club near you. They can hook you up with an Elmer and/or interesting activities. The last full weekend in June is the traditional ham radio field day exercise. Worth a look. They usually have hands-on experiences available to newbies.

 

I too was going to suggest starting by building a crystal radio. That is a good traditional starting point though I don't know how much you will actually learn about RF.

Next steps you can learn along the way (but not about RF) is to add audio amplification to a crystal set.

More in tune with RF is to build a regenerative radio.

A bit later you should build a superheterodyne radio receiver.

 

Thank you all. I have a rather poorly authored RF book I got from free at a library giveaway. It's called Secrets of RF design...It's not terrible but doesn't help me too much.

I've been downloading some pdfs from rfzone via Waybackmachine. I'll give them a try.