{"id":1970,"date":"2017-04-24T14:49:06","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T17:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2017-04-24T15:05:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T18:05:35","slug":"fun-with-regenerative-receivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/?p=1970","title":{"rendered":"Fun with Regenerative Receivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hackaday recently had a post called “Everyone Should Build at Least One Regenerative Receiver<\/a>“. These are relatively simple radios to build and they can receive any type of modulation, from AM to Single Sideband, to FM. Although the regen is one of the oldest receiver designs, it’s still widely used<\/a> in garage door openers, walkie-talkies and wireless “internet of things”\u00a0devices.<\/p>\n

Over the past year or so, I’ve taken the “at least one” part of the title literally. Last year\u00a0I built several regens, some successful, some not:<\/p>\n

John Fuhring’s Regen Receiver<\/a> – April\u2013October 2016<\/h3>\n

John Fuhring has an extensive and entertaining account of his attempts at building a Charles Kitchin “Scout Beginner’s Receiver<\/a>” regen kit. Because he was so forthcoming about his ups and downs in his\u00a0regen saga, I decided that I’d try following in his footsteps for my first scratch-built regen.<\/p>\n

My plan was to use a variation of the manhattan style of component placement<\/a>, by cutting-out spaces from a grid of squares on the copper surface of\u00a0the pc, as I did with the oscillator\/amplifier project described in the previous post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The radio tuned from 6.4 – 8.0 MHz. Although successful, it had poor selectivity (radio stations on top of each other), it had a hum from the power supply that was alleviated by substituting a battery, and the LM386 audio amplifier was susceptible to troublesome ‘motorboating’. I disassembled this radio in December 2016.<\/p>\n