I built this receiver back in 1998, but I continue to have fun tinkering with it. I wrote an article about it for "Electric Radio" magazine (Number 115). One of the major shortcomings was the crystal filter that Lew McCoy prescribed. It was very difficult to get 455 kHz crystals to work well as filters. At various times I've had all kinds of replacements in there in place of Lew's filter: a 455 kHz IF can, a Toyo CM-5 hybrid ceramic filter, a fancy Millen high Q IF transformer. None of them really worked well.
Recently I put a little +/- 3 kHz ceramic filter in there. This is a 6 kHz wide filter at around 455 kHz. I think it works really well. Above you can see the receiver in action. I use it with a little powered computer AF amplified speaker -- I just don't like headphones.
The latest filter mod with the 6 kHz ceramic filter is shown above.
Above you can see what the whole 455 kHz filter and transformer passband looks like. The input was through a 2k resistor placed between the .001 uF cap and the filter. The output was also through a 2k resistor placed at the top of the secondary of T1. (So don't pay any attention to the insertion loss.)
The NanoVNA is displaying 2 kHz per division. I put the BFO at 451 kHz. This results is excellent opposite sideband rejection. The filter is really too wide for SSB, but it is about perfect for AM, which I listen to quite often on both 75 and 40. SSB and AM both sound quite good. Check out the video above.
It is kind of amazing what can be done with just three 6U8 tubes.
There are many previous SolderSmoke blog posts about the Mate for the Mighty Midget Receiver here:
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/search?q=Mighty+Midget Be sure to keep selecting "earlier posts" so see more.
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Excellent Billit seems to be working well for you.
ReplyDeleteIm still working on the 17m SSB rig but but it's a very much up hill struggle getting it working.
73"s.
Paul.
HS0ZLQ G0MIH.