Regen Radio

[cheesy]

I started on this project yesterday. It's a Regenerative two tube radio the does both AM and SW. I think Regenerative may be a fancy word for Sorcery.
I started with a plastic bag full o' bits. I am this far along.

I also have the coils completed. Jeez, those things were a lot easier to wind when I was 10 and building crystal sets from scratch. I'd call it an incomplete kit, though. No power supply, no tubes, no phones. The pre formed holes in the boards look like they were made with a nail, so a lot of clean up and some re- drilling was necessary. Kind of like fitting a set of pre-computer formed headers to an engine 20 years ago.
Power supply is pretty simple, though. One D cell for the 1.5 vdc circuit, and five 9v batteries wired in series for the 45 vdc.
Tubes are coming from Belgium. It cost less to get four US made tubes from the EU than one Chinese made tube from the US.
I THINK I may have an old high impedance ear phone in the garage but a new one was cheap.

As we're kind of snowed and frozen in today, probably more will get done today.

[bogieboy]

what tubes does it run?

[cheesy]

Originally Posted by bogieboy

what tubes does it run?

T-1T4_DF91

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some in the old battery operated tube radios I have on the shelf

[cheesy]

Wrapped up the basic assembly tonight, doing the soldering part tomorrow.
Chassis with the back of the front plate and coils.


Front panel.

This was kind of a pain in the butt. First I needed cut out a paper pattern for the back of the panel. This sounds easy enough, but operating instructions were printed on the back of the pattern. So, I had to take the instruction booklet apart to make a copy of the pattern. Next, cut out the pattern and place it on a piece of aluminum foil and trace around the pattern. Cut the foil, then cut a strip off the bottom of the pattern so it's a bit shorter than the foil. Now, glue the two together with Elmers' finest and let dry. When things are dry, there are three cut outs to do through both the pattern and the foil. When that's done, glue that to the back of the front panel. Has something to do with the headphone.

[wheelbender6]

One of my favorite things to do on-line is to log into this forum and see what you are building, Cheesy.
-I have never built a radio, but we have a 1949 (or so) Philco Ford desk top radio that we keep in running condition. My wife's grandparents would listen to the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night on it.

[cheesy]

We have to keep on learning, WB. As Agatha Christies' Hercule' Poirot would say "Ve must exerzise zee little grey zells."

Your Philco is older than anything I own. I had an early fifties dual band Philco my grandma gave me in the mid sixties when she upgraded to a transistorized Zenith. I had that until sometime in the eighties when it finally died. I bought another a few years ago. I used to listen to WLS and WCFL in the evenings before falling asleep. If sleep was slow, I'd switch to SW and listen to an album show on Radio Havana. They'd play an entire album side, then broadcast political propaganda, then play another album side. Over and over. (I got quite the lecture from my school principal in 1967 for listening to 'Commie Bullshit' when I let it slip I was listening to RHV.)
My wife and I used to fall asleep to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater every night with that radio. It died about the same time E. G. Marshall called it a career with CBS.
As far as WSM and The Grand Old Opry, still a going concern. I can pick it up on my 1953 Zenith along with a couple of AM stations out of Toronto.
SW was becoming a wasteland but is staging a mild comeback since some of the major players; BBC, CBC, Radio China, Radio South Africa, and VOA, finally realized that the places that use SW the most don't have internet access.

[wheelbender6]

As a teen growing up near Atlanta, we listened to WLS out of Chicago at night on AM. All the local AM rock stations cut their power at night. It was tough to pick them up at night, even if you lived in Atlanta.

[cheesy]

I managed to pull in KAAY out of Little Rock on a very late night drive through Iowa to Colorado. One of the best album rock stations in the seventies.

I managed to get a couple CQ post cards from Radio Romania in 2012 and 2013.

[wheelbender6]

WLS was my introduction to Midwestern winter weather. In Atlanta, we might have one single digit temperature night per year. Chicago would have single digit night temps for weeks at a time.

[cheesy]

Originally Posted by wheelbender6

WLS was my introduction to Midwestern winter weather. In Atlanta, we might have one single digit temperature night per year. Chicago would have single digit night temps for weeks at a time.

Welcome to winter in Chicagoland. When I went to Hawaii for work in January 2019, I was wearing shorts while the wind chills back home were -50F for the entire week I was gone. Mrs. C was NOT happy.

Semiconductors are soldered in place.

Pain in the butt as there was some errors in the instructions and I needed to do things over. Wiring is all that's left to do. Still waiting on the tubes and 9v battery connectors.

[cheesy]

Wiring is done. Good Lord, who ever came up with the assembly instructions needs to build several following their own instructions. They were pretty haphazard but now I know. I'll see how this one pans out.
I did find plans online for a single tube regen unit that looks interesting and only needs 12 volts instead of the 45 volts this one runs. Assembly instructions made a lot more sense.

[cheesy]

Because I don't want to run 100' of antenna wire between trees in my backyard, in the winter, I threw together an antenna frame last night and this morning.


Mrs. C said I needed to start making things now that I have a passel of woodworking tools. So I showed her this. She was not impressed. She wants new kitchen cabinets. To quote Nelson from The Simpsons', I said "Ha. Ha".

[wheelbender6]

Originally Posted by cheesy

Because I don't want to run 100' of antenna wire between trees in my backyard, in the winter, I threw together an antenna frame last night and this morning.

Aw come on. The neighbors would love to see 100'of antenna wire strung between your trees (especially during thunderstorms).

[cheesy]

Got the antenna done today.


Also wrapped up the battery holder and harness for the 9v batteries. Five of those actually put out 48.7v with no load. Bet I could smoke an HO car really quick. I'm just waiting on the tubes now.

[cheesy]

Yay! The tubes arrived today. And... it works. Sort of. Either the audio signal is very weak and I need an amplifier; the ear phone is a POS, or I'm old and CHS.

But it does work. Interesting how to tune it. Turn the Regen switch fully to the right and start turning the tuning switch. When there is a squeal in the ear phone, turn the Regen switch to the left until the squeal stops and you should be receiving an audio signal. I did pick up several stations on the AM band, though the local station, 1180 in Sycamore, IL was the only one I could hear. Also picked up a couple foreign stations on SW.