VHF Aircraft radio communications receiver

This is simple radio receiver project which is capable to receive aviation radio voice signals which are transmit between 118MHz to 138MHz in AM (A3E). We got initial idea of this project by reading Sverre Holm’s (LA3ZA) article about "cheap VHF receiver project". Like LA3ZA’s original article this project is also based on Samsung’s KA22429 FM radio receiver IC.

KA22429 is low voltage FM radio receiver system developed by Samsung for portable radio receivers and as described by Holm’s it can push into VHF region by changing few values in its original circuit. In this project we redesign the schematic and PCB with some of those changes and now it can directly tune into aviation band with minimum number of adjustments.

The dimension of PCB of this receiver is 70mm × 45mm and all the components except KA22429 are standard through-hole type.

KA22429 testing setup with 5V PSU and AF power amplifier.

For the optimal results we recommended to use high gain audio power amplifier and good external antenna with this receiver. During prototyping / testing, we drive this system with 5V DC power supply and also connect this receiver to TDA2050 AF power amplifier. At our testing we got very successful results on 124.900MHz (Colombo Airways Center), 119.100MHz (Colombo/ Ratmalana Approach) and 118.100MHz (Colombo/ Ratmalana Tower). The recorded sample on 124.900MHz using this receiver is available in here.

The schematics, PCB design and wiring diagrams of this receiver are available to download at google drive.

Comments

CD2003 - yet another simple FM radio receiver

In the last few days, we are looking for some simple FM radio receiver to integrate into one of our ongoing projects. For that, we try several FM radio receiver ICs including TDA7000, CD2003/TA2003/TA8164, CXA1019, and KA22429. Out of all those chips we select CD2003 (or TA2003/TA8164) based receiver for our project because of its simplicity and outstanding performance. Except to CD2003, Sony CXA1019 also perform well but we drop it because of its higher component count. We design our receiver based on Toshiba TA2003 datasheet and later we try TA8164 and CD2003 with the same circuit. Either CD2003 or TA8164 can directly replace TA2003 IC, and as per our observations, TA8164 gives excellent results out of those 3 chips. A prototype version of CD2003 FM radio receiver The PCB design and schematic which we used in our prototype project are available to download at google drive (including pin-outs of crystal filters and inductors ). Except for CD2003 IC, this receiver consist...

Arduino superheterodyne receiver

In this project, we extend the shortwave superheterodyne receiver we developed a few years ago . Like the previous design, this receiver operates on the traditional superheterodyne principle. In this upgrade, we enhanced the local oscillator with Si5351 clock generator module and Arduino control circuit. Compared to the old design, this new receiver uses an improved version of an intermediate frequency amplifier with 3 I.F transformers. In this new design, we divide this receiver into several blocks, which include, mixer with a detector, a local oscillator, and an I.F amplifier. The I.F amplifier builds into one PCB. The filter stage, mixer, and detector stages place in another PCB. Prototype version of 455kHz I.F amplifier. In this prototype build, the Si5351 clock generator drives using an Arduino Uno board. With the given sketch, the user can tune and switch the shortwave meter bands using a rotary encoder. The supplied sketch support clock generation from 5205kHz (tuner f...

Calculator for audio output transformers

Audio output transformers are heavily used in a vacuum tube and some (older) transistor base audio power amplifiers, but these days output transformer are quite hard to find and expensive item. For homebrew projects, the best option is to construct those transformers by ourselves and this script helps to calculate winding parameters for those transformers. This " AF output transformer calculator " script is written using Python and it works with most of the commonly available Python interpreters . The script is available to download at google drive under the terms of GNU General Public License version 3.0 . Homebrewed 25k: 4 output transformer Once supplied the input parameters this script provides a winding ratio, the number of turns required for primary and secondary winding and required copper wire gauges for both primary and secondary windings, etc. We construct several AF output transformers based on results of this script, which including transformers for M...