Build Your Own Transistor Radios: A Hobbyist's Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits 1st Edition

I must admit that I came to this book somewhat math challenged.I tend to be more interested in a historical perspective. But having said that, Mr. Quan has written a book that somehow manages to cover all bases here.Using the AM radio as a context, starting with the most basic simple circuits, then building upon each concept, he manages to cover the history and development of the major types of circuits used for AM radio reception, and the math and theory behind each circuit building block, show plans and schematics with detailed parts lists and sources to not only construct several types of AM radios, but also to make your own test oscillators and modulators for developing and testing circuits under construction. He also has a section covering the details of other equipment needed, and some inexpensive ways to obtain it, to equip your "radio electronics experimentation lab".He goes on to discuss improvements to circuits and trade-offs in further development between performance, cost and power consumption giving you the chance to improve designs previously constructed and measure the improvements.All this is presented in a well illustrated, intuitive, entertaining, easy to grasp form, that actually manages to give a reasonably complete analog electronics education by covering the various building blocks of the humble AM transistor radio including power supplies, oscillators and amplifiers as well as everything else specific to an AM radio.If you spend any time with this book you will not only learn to build and design your own AM radio circuits, but you will be well on your way to understanding a lot of the theory behind all analog electronic design. Well done !

I have built three radios from this book – TRF radio from page 57, the regenerative radio from page 90 and 8-transistor superheterodyne radio from page 105. I used crystal earphone for the TRF and regenerative radio, and they worked amazingly well. Similarly, I was really surprised how well the commercial 8-transistor superheterodyne radio worked. I used a speaker for the output, and I could hear several AM bands, definitely a lot more and lot more clearly as compared to the earlier two I built, and felt really proud showing off to my friends, because the audio output quality matched closely with the commercial AM radios. I used copper clad board for these, similar to the one in the cover of the page; was difficult at first, but got easier to layout and solder the circuit when I got to the third one. It is definitely easier to build them using copper clad board.Besides building these circuits, I also love the theoretical explanations of several concepts in the book. Sure, it’s focused more towards practical purpose of how to build things like amplifiers, oscillators, IF circuits but I believe the concepts are well explained in a nice and simple way. Being an electrical engineering student, I find these explanations much more helpful and insightful as to the few analog and RF circuits textbooks I have read. I highly recommend this book, and building the circuits and seeing them work is great fun.

I was an electronic hobbyist in the 1950’s and spent a lot of time studying and building AM radios with vacuum tubes. I abandoned the hobby in the early 1960’s, but, watched the development of transistor radios with interest until the late 1970’s when phase lock loop (PLL) circuits entered the market. Nothing from my experience 20 years earlier helped me with PLL.Retired now I have taken up electronics as a hobby again so I was thrilled to see Ronald Quan’s book described, on the cover, as “A Hobbyists Guide to High-Performance and Low-Powered Radio Circuits”. Chapter by chapter he describes the theory and circuitry of Low-Power Tuned Radio-Frequency Radios, Transistor Reflex Radios, A Low-Power Regenerative Radio, Exotic or “Off the Wall” Superhetrodyne Radios and ends with an Introduction to Software-Defined Radios (SDRs). His description of SDRs is the best I have read and he includes circuits for SDR AM front ends.Emotionally the first 176 pages of the book were like watching Emeril do a cooking show. He gives you a circuit with some clever twists and a few pages later “Kicks it up a notch” again, again and again. It is a thrill ride.Unfortunately, it all ends, on page 176, less than half way through the book when he announces “Well, this ends the first part of this book, which is geared more for the hobbyist to just build or experiment with radio circuits.” The next 241 pages are filled with theory, formulas and trigonometric identities. On page 324 Mr. Quan reveals his perspective on what he has been writing since page 176 when he says “Analyzing the common-emitter amplifier in Figure 19-11 will be done a little bit differently from most college courses…” A college course. The cover says “A Hobbyist’s Guide…”Mr. Quan gets back to fun stuff in the last chapter titled “Learn by doing”. I wish he had skipped the college course and given us some PLL circuits. He could also have developed circuits around chips like the MK484 and TDA 1572 which are available from his list of suppliers.The first 176 pages are easily worth the price of the book, I only wish he had made better use of the rest of them.

The textbook is fine for beginners, but only covers low frequency AM circuits.FM circuits are not covered, which is very disappointing. Anyone who builds radios knows that NOT making an AM radio by mistake when you're trying to make any high frequency circuit is the real challenge.