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Two-Transistor Regenerative
Receiver
By Frank de Leuw (Germany)

Regenerative? What’s that? In the age of Twitter and smart-

phones, you can’t assume that things not related to the In-
ternet are still generally known — or maybe they are? Amaz-
ingly, Google delivers nearly 80,000 hits for the search term
‘regenerative receiver’ and much more for the German name
Audion, even though it lacks a lower-case i as a prefix (‘iAu-
dion’ also exists, but it yields only 12,000 hits). From this
we can conclude that this type of receiver is not entirely un-
known nowadays, even if some of the search results have
nothing to do with radio circuits.
In any case, it’s a reasonable assumption that you all have
idea of what ‘regenerative’ means. If not: it’s a super-simple
but nevertheless sensitive type of radio receiver. If you want
to know more, check the references. The Wikipedia entry
on this topic [1] is also quite extensive. The author is a fan
of the many HF experiments and projects dreamed up by
the well-known Elektor author Burkhard Kainka. Based on
Kainka’s regenerative receiver circuit, the author developed
an especially simple but high-performance version using

DIY Retro Radio

modern components — a regenerative receiver using only

garden-variety transistors, but with good reception charac-
R3 R6
C3 C7 C5 teristics. The author has published a version of this design on
100k

4k7

1n 100n 1n C6 his website [2].

R5
220u
The Elektor version, which is perhaps a bit easier to build
1M

C4 R4
T2
yourself, is described here. Instead of breadboard construc-
R1
33k
BT1 tion, which was common in the days before PCBs were in-
100n
BC548 vented, the component layout of the design presented here
1M

9V
T1
C2 has been optimised with the Lochmaster 4 program for as-
100n
sembly on an Elex prototyping board (a.k.a. UPBS-1 and
BC548
L1
PH1 available from the Elektor Shop).
P1 R2
C1
First a few words about the circuit. A noteworthy feature is
220R

that both transistors are type BC548 in the 0815 package.

500p
10k
200uH Apparently types that are actually designed for audio use
are adequate for use with HF signals in the medium-wave
110211 - 11
broadcast band from 0.5 to 1.6 MHz, which is what we’re

130 Elektor 7/8-2012

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interested in here.
Variable capacitor C1 and coil L1 form the usual parallel reso-
nant circuit that determines the receiver frequency. The spe-
cial feature of a regenerative receiver is that an active com-
A
ponent, or more precisely the gain of an active component, is
used to implement a form of feedback that is adjusted to the
point where the circuit is just on the edge of oscillation. This
reduces the load on the resonant circuit and increases its B

selectivity, and the high gain makes the receiver fairly sensi-
tive. The active component in this case is T1. The feedback
is provided by P1 and the tap on L1. Here T1 does double L1
duty: it provides HF gain and (thanks to the nonlinear char-
acteristic of the BE junction) it demodulates the AM signals
C1
commonly transmitted in the MW band. P1
T2 provides additional gain for the audio signal. A small
loudspeaker or (preferably) headphones can be connected
to coupling capacitor C6. The headphones should have high (ca. 300 x 90 x 18 mm)
impedance to improve matching. For this reason, it’s a good
idea to connect the two earphones in series.
A (350 x 20 x 10 mm)
Assembling the circuit is straightforward thanks to the layout
for the prototyping board. A bit more dexterity is required for
B (300 x 20 x 10 mm)
making the aerial, but even here you don’t need much more 110211 - 12

than the usual hobbyist tools. You can have planks and laths
sawn to the dimensions given in the components list in any
home improvement shop for a small charge. ing an external potentiometer; this is also shown in the com-
Fit the PCB in the middle of the baseboard between the vari- ponent layout for the Elex board). Wind 20 turns of enam-
able capacitor on the left and the potentiometer on the right. elled copper wire on the cross, with a tap at the end of the
Screw the lath cross to the baseboard behind the PCB as fifth turn. The exact arrangement is not as critical as it might
shown in the photo of the prototype (note: in the prototype appear to an HF novice.
the author fitted a trimpot directly on the PCB instead of us- The prototype built in the Elektor lab drew 1.4 mA from a 9 V

COMPONENT LIST
Resistors
R1,R5 = 1MΩ
R2 = 220Ω
R3 = 100kΩ
R4 = 33kΩ
R6 = 4.7kΩ
P1 = 10kΩ potentiometer, linear

Capacitors
C1 = 500pF tuning capacitor, see text
C2,C4,C7 = 100nF ceramic, pitch 2.5mm
C3,C5 = 1nF ceramic, pitch 5mm
C6 = 220µF 16V, radial, pitch 5mm

Inductors
L1 = loop antenna, 20 turns ECW, tap at 5 turns (see text) Miscellaneous
Prototyping board type Elex-1
Semiconductors 9V battery w. clip
T1,T2 = BC548 Small loudspeaker or headphones (see text)

Elektor 7/8-2012 131

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battery. The measured frequency range with this construc- frequency range to the MW band. In our opinion this regen-
tion was 0.4 to 1.4 MHz. The reception quality is surprisingly erative receiver is not only a good example of a loop aerial
good, once you get the hang of adjusting the feedback with receiver, but also a good candidate for a ‘father and son’
potentiometer P1. In terms of reception, the regenerative project where you can try out lots of things and learn from
receiver can hold its own against superheterodyne receivers. them. And don’t forget that a loop aerial receiver is a direc-
If you want to connect an amplifier instead of headphones, tional receiver!
you can replace R6 by a potentiometer with the positive end (110211-!)
of C6 connected to its wiper.
If you can’t scare up a suitable variable capacitor rated at [1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_circuit
500  pF or so, you can purchase the VCAP4 from [3] and [2] www.elektronik-radio.de/39994.html (in German)
connect the two 265-pF gangs in parallel. Incidentally, in the [3] www.ak-modul-bus.de/ (in German)
Elektor lab it was necessary to reduce the turns count of the
aerial loop by three in order to roughly match the receiver

Same PCB Shoots Again!

A thermometer with an unusual readout
By Luc Lemmens (Elektor Labs)

In the April 2012 edition of Elektor we published a design for

a thermometer that uses two counter wheels from a 1960’s
pinball machine to display the temperature. With few minor
modifications to the firmware, a credit unit from a pinball
machine can also be used as a display device.
The counters used in the original design are a pair of mod-
ules normally used in a pinball machine to show the player’s
score. Each module can display a number from 0 to 9. These
modules can only count up, which means that a change from
2 to 1 requires spinning the counter wheel all the way around
to reach the new position.
EM pinball machines contain another type of counter called
the credit unit, which shows how many games the player can
still play before inserting more coins in the machine. It has a
wheel that can display a number from 1 to 20. Some credit
units can even go as high as 37 (the experts in this area
disagree on the highest number ever). Unlike score counters,
credit units can count down because they have a dual mech-
anism and two actuator coils. These units also have contacts
to indicate the zero and maximum positions of the wheel.
The numbers are smaller than those on score counters, and
the available range of numbers is usually not especially large
— but this can be taken as a challenge for developing version that? The readout is a bit different, but the circuitry for the
2.0 of the thermometer. previous version of the thermometer has everything we need
Two contacts, two coils and two digits; what can we do with for driving this unit as well. With a few changes in the con-

132 Elektor 7/8-2012