The Harold Smith, KE6TI This is an ordinary direct-conversion receiver of fairly ‘simple design, comprising only seven transistors. | built it or quick and easy assembly and mounted it in an enclosure. | used only leaded through-hole ‘components, (no integrated circuits — ICs), with all easily available parts. It tunes the bottom 100 kHz of the 7 MHz band for CW reception. Increasing the cutoff frequency of the auidio low-pass filter could also allow reception of SSB. A 1 ,:V signal from a signal generator is clearly audible in my headphones. Circuitry The receiver consists of four stages (see Figure 1): 41 A variable oscillator that is voltage tuned via a pair ‘of common rectifier diodes. 2 A product detector with audio output 3 A low-pass filter that ros off above roughly 1 kHz. 4 An audio amplifier with more than enough gain to drive headphones, | chose to tune the variable oscillator with a pair of rectifier diodes serving as varactors. This avoids the ‘expense of an air variable capacitor. You might try diodes from your junk bax in place of the 1N4002s that | used, | chose @ Hartley oscillator configuration, because it ‘gave good tuning range with not too extreme tuning voltages. The Hartley uses a tapped inductor that | ‘wound myself on a T50-7 toroid, | also used only NPO and COG ceramic capacitors in the oscillator to provide stabil that was more than adequate for ‘CW. I did have to tweak the coil a little to put the oscillator range where | wanted it, which allowed me to avoid using a trimmer capacitor. The tweaking con- sisted of compressing and stretching the turns on the toroid until ittuned the range | wanted. You can also add or subtract turns if needed. DC2020 Receiver eat The mixer and product detector is a differential stage, which gives good gain and light loading of the tuned circuit. The tuning range in this version is small enough that I didn't need to provide for peaking the front end to follow the oscillator tuning. You can change the bandwidth of the front end by paralleling a resistor across C1 to lower its Q, or by changing the number of turns on the primary of T1. This will lower the front-end gain, ‘An active low-pass filter with a cutoff of about 1 KHz follows the detector stage. It should be scalable to other frequencies by changing the values of the low- pass filter resistors. For a 3 kHz cutoff, make R11 and R12 each 510 © and change C17 to 100 pF. This will increase the audio bandwidth without affecting the gain. ‘The two-transistor audio amplifier is based on a ‘Sziklai Pair It produces plenty of audio to drive head phones. Mount the audio volume control, R15, close to Q5 and QS. | used a volume control with a builtin switch to tum the power to the radio ON and OFF. The very large decoupling capacitor, C19, is used for hum suppression. ‘The lowe freciiency “Increasing the response is deter- mined almost entirely cutoff frequency of by the: vais of C20, the audio low-pass and the impedance of Tehecdtheese nis filter could also ‘common homebrew allow reception practice to use 32.0 ” Btereophonas win °F 998. little radios lke this, usually with the phone October 2021 35oszttoonot Be BY Figure 1 — The schematle diagram ofthe 02020 receiver jack wired to put the two earpieces in series, giving ‘@ 64 2 headphone. With that load, C20 should be 10 uF. With high-impedance headphones — 600 0 ‘or more — use 1 uF for C20. This isn't a major problem as long as one uses the correct value C20. ‘The parts will be adequately secure if you build the receiver with this simple style. The only real issue is usually the inductors, especially the oscillator coil, L1 It must be mounted so it cannot move. | do this using double-sided foam tape. One caveat here: If you know you will be adjusting the toroid, do not stick it ‘down until you are done. You can accomplish this and stil have the toroid in its final position by leaving the cover paper on the foam tape until you are ready to permanently stick down the coil Most of the parts, including the bare copper-clad board for quick construction, are available from Digi- Key, Mouser, Allied Electronics & Automation, and so 36 October 2021 2 Head: ‘cz0* phono tbe © R21 00 AF Ampiiior Decimal values of eapsctance aren microtaads (iF) ‘bers arin pcolarads (pF); RResitnces ae ohms k= 100, Met, 000 Bris 910 15Vee ‘Ti: primary 3 tums, secondary 2 urs, on 750-7 toro 1:25 tums on 7507, tapped 4 tars from ground end 13, D4 aro high-offciancy (2 mA) green LEDs 20 shouldbe + F with 600 (or higher) headphones ‘Should be 10 uF sad with low phones (eg. 64 ‘stereos, bo halves in ses). on. Toroids are available from Amidon Associates, Kits and Parts, and others, There are only two toroids to wind, and they both use the same T50-7-type form. | mounted my radio in a tin (see Figures 2 and 8). recommend enclosures for construction to prevent accidental movement of parts. Power this radio from a 9 V to 15V de source. It draws about 25 mA at 9 V. Ifthe supply is external to the radio, include a series diode to protect the radio from reverse-polarity mishaps. Because the radio fre- quency stability depends on the supply voltage, | added a simple voltage regulator to the tuning poten- tiometer, R8, in the form of the two green LEDs, D3. and D4. The 3.8 V drop across them does not change much as the supply voltage changes. | added a hole in the enclosure, so one of the LEDs is, Visible from the panel (see Figure 2) to serve as a Power ON indicator. The tuning potentiometer can be almost any value from about 10 k® or higher.Figure 2— The receiver is mounted in a tn enclosure, Construction Obtain a piece of circuit board material and trim it to the size you want. Mine is about 8 x 4 inches, cut to fit inside the lid of the tin | used as an enclosure cab- inet. Scour the copper with steel wool unti it is shiny, and carefully wipe off the residue. located approximately where | wanted the large pieces — potentiometers and connectors — to end, Up, and marked keep-out areas on the board. Then | carefully drilled their mounting holes through both the board and the lid. The potentiometers and connec- tors hold the board to the lid, so no extra holes are needed Iwas more convenient to build most of the circuitry, before mounting the big parts. That let the board sit flat on the workbench while | worked on it. ‘Start by soldering to ground any one of the grounded parts. I started with R3. To the non-grounded end of Figure 3 — The radio PC board mounts tothe li ofthe enclosure, and the 8 V battery is shown Inthe left side of the enclosure. ' Figure 4— A toroid can be wound with the help of @ Dobbin of wire, that part, attach those parts that connect to it, and go ‘on from there. There is no need to try for the shortest possible lead lengths, but the parts should be ‘mounted well enough that they do not move when the board is moved Winding the Toroids Every time the wire goes through the core counts as a turn. This radio uses T50-7 toroids, which are easier to hold and wind than smaller ones. If you want, you can use a bobbin with the wire on it (see Figure 4), and simply thread the bobbin through the core the correct number of times.Try to lay out the radio so that your construction fol- lows the schematic. You can see in Figure 3 that the ‘oscillator with the toroid is down in the lower right corner of the board, Above that is the product, detector, and the audio stages go off at right angles: toward the center of the board. It was easy 10 assemble and modify as needed. Take your time and check your work often. Concluding Comments The DC2020 is a basic direct-conversion receiver. It is possible to modify this radio for other bands. The only parts that would have to change are Tt and C1 in the product detector, and L1 and C5 in the oscil- lator. Start by scaling their values proportionally to the change of frequency. July 2021 QST Cover Plaque Award Winner Woody White KZ4AK Inhis article, “A Sensitive Field Strength Meter for Foxhunting’ Woody White, KZ4AK, tells us how to repackage a popular circuit Using the ADB307 chip to make it more Useful for locating hidden transmitters. A large-scale analog meter is the secret. QST Cover Plaque Awards are given ‘to the author or authors of the fos 38 October 2021 Photos by the author. Harold Smith, KEBTI, earned his Novice-class license in 1961 wile a highschool freshman, He has been licensed continu: ‘ously aver since. He began homobrewing whi in high school, land sill has his much-batlered 1962 lagio Amateurs Hand- ‘book, Harold earned a degree in Raclo-TV in 1968, and a BSEE in 1983. He was employed as an olectronies engineerin consumer elecronies unt retrement in 2009. He now spends ‘more time building than operating, You can reach Harold at kestinomebrew@ gmail.com. VOTE For updates to this article, ssee the QST Feedback page at wnwarrorgifeedback. A Sensitive Field Strength Meter for Foxhunting