Two transistor superheterodyne shortwave receiver

This is two transistors and two IF transformer based superheterodyne receiver which is designed to receive 13m to 41m bands. With quite good external antenna this receiver performs similarly to the commercially available shortwave receiver and its audio quality is at a very satisfactory level.

Prototype version of two transistor superheterodyne shortwave receiver.

This receiver can be constructing on PCB, breadboard or commonly available veroboard or stripboard. For tuning use Polyvaricon or air variable capacitor. For precision tuning, connect small trimmer capacitor with parallel to variable capacitor’s gangs or use mechanical wheel assembly with the variable capacitor.

This receiver is designed to work with 9V regulated power supply and it requires an external AF amplifier to drive the headphone or speaker. In our testing, we use a TDA2050 audio power amplifier with this receiver.

With small wire antenna, this receiver is capable to receive most of the stations which including CRI, BBC World service, All India Radio, etc. in Sri Lanka. To receive other stations which including VoA, Radio France, Deutsche Welle, ABC we use our 2 × 12 feet T antenna.

For initial IF transformer tuning we recommended to use a quite large antenna and some powerful station. For example in Sri Lanka, CRI (17855.00kHz, 17730.00kHz, etc.) or AIR (11710.00kHz, 13710.00kHz, 9690.00kHz, 11620.00kHz, etc.) are quite easy to locate and tune.

The complete schematic of this superheterodyne shortwave receiver is available at google drive.

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