Monday 22 April 2013

Budget RF amplifier

What do you do when you need to give that weak signal (or in this case all weak signals) a boost and want to spend no money? Well in my case, i had a handful of components, no circuit board and not much solder. I flicked through some of my old books and came across an easy design that would suit perfectly. I drew this diagram using an online designer, so its not perfect, but you get the idea.




 Component list: RESISTORS :  1 x 1.2k, 1 x 47k  CAPACITORS: 1 x 10pf  ceramic, 1 x .001uf  ceramic  DIODE: 1N4002  TRANSISTOR: NPN DS548, SWITCH x 1, BATTERY CLIP x 1 and 9V BATTERY x 1.

 The components were scavenged and i had just enough solder to roughly attach "legs" to them. They are then connected and mounted on a wood base via the same method i used as a child...screws and washers! The end result is not pretty, but signal increase from the multiband and pre-selector is fantastic.

RF amplifier working with the pre-selector
                   

2 comments:

  1. This is excellent info mate. Might even be able to have a go at this myself. Thanks.

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  2. could be good if you ever run a longwire for your Tecsun, to pull in those weak signals.

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