Showing posts with label 78xx. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 78xx. Show all posts

13 October, 2013

The simplest possible AM transmitter

Here's a design for a 1 MHz amplitude modulated (AM) transmitter. I've been looking a while for something like this, a simple short range AM transmitter for the medium wave band, as I needed something for demonstration of my collection of old radios.

The result is the AM transmitter shown here in an Altoids tin on top of a Radionette Kurér radio. This is a portable tube radio from the 1950's. Several hundred thousands were produced, and it was exported from Norway to 60 countries. It is still popular among collectors.

The transmitter is as simple as it gets. The heart of it is a 1 MHz crystal oscillator in a can. Its 5 Volt power is modulated via an audio transformer, one taken from the output of a transistor amplifier (primary 147 ohms - secondary 3 ohms). I drive the modulator from my cell phone into the low resistance side of the transformer and get good audio when the phone's volume is set to maximum.