Newbie question: shortwave coils and modification of an am radio
Hi,
As a teenager, many years ago, I fooled around with electronics and put
together a shortwave receiver. I know a little about electronics and radio, but
I don't have a good theroretical knowledge about the subject that would allow
me to design or modify circuits.
I recently came upon a Radio Shack educational toy that was a shortwave / am
radio kit. I noticed that the only difference in the frequency of reception was
replacement of two coils. I was challenged to take an old am transistor radio
and replace the broadcast band coil and substitute either of the two coils
provided in the Radio Shack kit and see what I could pull in. I was sucessful
and with a rudimentary antenna at night received some good clear shortwave
reception at one end of the dial.
I searched the net looking for information about how far I could push reception
into different bands by simply winding specific coils but I have not been too
successful. I do have an old Japanese shortwave receiver that utilized
switching of antenna and oscilator coils to cover 5 different bands. I picked
this up at a garage sale many years ago but I am lacking two specific coils. I
had always hoped to get the knowledge so I could produce coils for the specific
bands I am lacking.
Anyway....If anyone has information about how to modify an am transistor radio
to receive shortwave and what I can do such as coil production or readjusting
RF coils to retune for other bands, I would appreciate it.
This is just an amusement project for me and I don't expect to get much out of
it except the fun of playing around.
Thanks,
Ed
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