Various diagram

A simple shortwave radio detector is neither very sensitive nor very selective. However, with a little extra amplification we can improve the reception performance significantly.

The additional circuit is designed to compensate for the losses in the resonant circuit. A transistor is used to amplify the RF signal and feed it back into the resonant circuit. When the gain is set correctly we can make the amount of this feedback exactly equal to the losses. The resonant circuit is then critically damped and has a very high Qfactor. Now we can separate transmissions that are just 10 kHz apart, and we can tune in to very weak stations.

The tuning capacitor used has two gangs of vanes with capacitances of 240 pF and 80 pF. These two gangs are connected in parallel to make a 320 pF variable capacitance. The air-cored inductor has 25 turns on a diameter of 10 mm, with taps at 5-turn intervals. The resonant circuit so formed is capable of covering the full shortwave  band from 5 MHz to 25 MHz.

The short wave detector can be connected to a power amplifier, or, for exam-ple, amplified PC loudspeakers. The antenna does not have to  be very long: in experiments we used a one metre length of wire. Tuning the radio involves adjusting the variable capacitor to bring in the station and then adjusting the gain of the feed-back circuit for optimal output volume. If the potentiometer is turned up too far, the receiver will go into self-oscillation and become a mini-transmitter. At  the optimal setting the sound  quality is very pleasant and certainly no worse than many ordinary shortwave radios.

If you find shortwave detectors that use a battery and an amplifier a little new-fangled, you can get your fix of nostalgia by dispensing with the battery and connecting a crystal earpiece to the detector’s output. The radio will of course also work without the feedback circuit, but with rather poorer performance.