I’ve listened to the SolderSmoke podcast for quite a while, and you’d think I would have availed myself of Bill’s sage wisdom. He’s previously made mention of the endless fun and rapture he’s had tinkering with crystal radios, carried away to the sounds of heavenly lutes (okay, I’m extrapolating here). But he’s also mentioned that he’s had considerably less fun with regeneratives: indeed, proclaiming that they must come from the place where all the solder smells like brimstone.

SolderSmoke Daily News: Crystal Radios from Heaven, Regens from ?

You think I would have listened. But no: I had to try to tinker together N1TEV’s Ultra Simple W1AW Receiver. I’ve now got the all the worst features of regeneratives:

• Hand capacitance: the oscillator wavers and even halts when I touch the regenerative control.
• The oscillator starts and stops unpredictably. If you adjust the regeneration control until the oscillator starts, you can back up and it will stay running until it suddenly clicks off.
• Gain is pretty low. I can just barely hear W1AW, along with some of the digital signals within the band. I installed the optional volume control to boost the level, which helps some, but it’s not brilliant.
• Antenna loading seems to do odd things to the antenna too.
• Touching anything in the circuit seems to quench oscillation.

I did gain a few bits of knowledge in doing this project, but frankly, it’s annoying. Perhaps in the light of day, when the clerics of electronics have said their prayers for my salvation, this thing will seem worth investing time in debugging. I have no doubt that if I lived only a hundred miles from W1AW, this would work, but it’s not inspiring me to greater investment of time.

I think I’ll convert to the Direct Conversion faith for my next project.