Some month ago I found in my parents attic my old (east german...) electronics experimenters set that I used for learning electronics as a kid. I had too many memories connected to it to throw it away, and I thought that maybe my son will use it one day to play with it and learn something useful...
So when I watched Martins contest announcement video, I remembered what the first experiment was that I did as a kid: building a (medium band) AM receiver. So this looked like the perfect idea: build an AM receiver with the set, and then have my son hear some radio with it (and maybe we can, afterwards, build an even better version together, so he knows what my hobby is about). So I looked into the included manual (the set was still complete
, and decided to build an "audion receiver" (see the image for a schematic, or the ZIP for the DesignSpark PCB version).
Unfortunately I found out, after getting only static noise in the speaker and looking for errors for an hour or so, that the last radio station I could receive in my area has been switched off a year ago. Bummer. No fun, nothing to show.
Fortunately for me the experimenters set had enough parts to build a small medium band transmitter (which is also part of the manual - see for the attached schematic too). So I went ahead and build a small transmitter, connected it to my receiver (it has not enough transmit power to transmit via air). And that was more of a success - I could receive the 1kHz signal, though it was not very loud.
So it looks like one of the most fun experiments for electronics beginners won't work anymore
And I cannot report complete success in building a functioning... But it still was fun experience, such a trip down the memory lane...
Btw: I wrote a more
detailed report, especially about the old experimenters set, on my
blog.
