Very simple MW receiver with one transistor

[grok]

mw-radio-1-full.png (63.38 KiB) Viewed 62995 times

Here we have a MW radio receiver that is easy to build. MW stands for medium frequency radio band. Stations working in MW can be received from quite far away. I personally was listening to a station more then 400 miles away from me using a bit more advance version of this receiver.

This is not the best, but it is probably the simplest you can build in modern US. Crystal radio is even simpler but it is more difficult to find a strong enough station. This radio should be enough to hear something if you live not in the middle of wilderness. If you do, look for improved version I am going to publish shortly.

Unless you have a powerful radio station close to you, this radio requires an antenna and a grounding.

For antenna you can use not very thin wire about 20-30 feet long. The longer and ticker the better. Not expansive option is enameled 16 AWG wire. You can easily find on Amazon. The wire should be place as high as possible. Better outside of house. In some houses walls can reduce radio waves.

For grounding, "Earth" of the scheme, you can connect to some metal case of some device, you PC for example. But be sure the device is connected to an outlet with proper grounding, it is not always the case. If you not sure about this, just stick a long metal part in the ground and connect wire directly to it.

Transistor Q1 can be replaced with bc546