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Vintage Radio Restoration - Maplin Direct Conversion Receiver

Please click each image below to enjoy a larger view.

Maplin was a British company, similar to Radio Shack. The biggest difference was that they also published a monthly, and sometimes a bimonthly, construction magazine. Interestingly, they then many times offered kits based on the construction articles. This receiver was one such example. It is a monoband direct conversion receiver capable of being built for any band from 160M up to 10M.

The design is very well thought-out and includes audio derived AGC and therefore an S meter: a rarity in DC designs. Audio chain shaping is done to create a passband around 2.8KHz. In addition, the VFO has a buffered output that could be used to drive a frequency counter or used as the VFO for a companion transmitter.

This example came from eBay and was non-working. The fault was a blown RF front end MOSFET - 3SK88. I replaced it with a 3N201 that has diode-protected gates.

The PCB is of excellent quality as are the chassis and cabinet. Highly recommend if you can find one.

See the attached article for more information (PDF, 19 MBytes).