Lately I have had the itch for building radios in little tins. The Altoids is the QRP standard tin, so I thought that I'd begin there with the 20 meter RockMite: love it. I found a cool little regenerative receiver for the 40 meter band. Old men like me remember 'regen' receivers as being a little bit 'fiddly' but VERY good performers with minimal parts count. Well, this is no different. It's two transistors and a smattering of support parts, all operating from a 9 volt battery. Naturally I put it into an Altoids tin. I've attached a picture.
Does it work? Well, I copied Gil tonight using this receiver and he is over 800 miles away and was not strong in the big rig, so I was QUITE happy that he was quite readable using the little regen. No filters in this little beastie, so your 'grey matter must do the filtering for you, like the old days.
The kit is called the 'Sawdust' receiver, available from:
http://breadboardradio.com
They also have a QRP transceiver called the 'Splinter', 650 mWatt for 40 meters with freetuning receiver and VXO to pull the transmit crystal frequency a few KHz. It even comes with a key! You have NO idea how tempted I am to build one.
http://breadboardradio.com/breadboardradio/Products.html
73 de RadioRay ..._ ._
Does it work? Well, I copied Gil tonight using this receiver and he is over 800 miles away and was not strong in the big rig, so I was QUITE happy that he was quite readable using the little regen. No filters in this little beastie, so your 'grey matter must do the filtering for you, like the old days.
The kit is called the 'Sawdust' receiver, available from:
http://breadboardradio.com
They also have a QRP transceiver called the 'Splinter', 650 mWatt for 40 meters with freetuning receiver and VXO to pull the transmit crystal frequency a few KHz. It even comes with a key! You have NO idea how tempted I am to build one.
http://breadboardradio.com/breadboardradio/Products.html
73 de RadioRay ..._ ._