How a low power, super het radio works

Back in October 2011, EDN’s Paul Rako published Ron Quan’s Design Idea, “A super-het radio runs 5 years on a C-cell, plus a pentode radio” and it was a very well viewed and informative technical project that EDN readers enjoyed.

The following month, Rako published the schematic for the super-het radio in that October Design Idea which was again well received.

Well, thanks to Paul Rako contacting me with information about how the low power radio works in Quan’s Design idea. Quan and Rako sent the following:

The following is an explanation by Quan of how the low power radio works, including information about his new book “Build Your Own Transistor Radios” that I will be reviewing on EDN this month:

See figure 1 below.

 
Click on image to enlarge

Figure 1 Hand drawn schematic of the 5 year on C cell superhet radio.