FM radio reciever kit

[icko]

Hello does anybody know any good kits around for FM (stereo) receivers?

There aren't much out there, I have only found one:
http://electronics-diy.com/TDA7000_FM_Receiver.php
Anybody tried this one and can tell me about the quality?

Or if anybody knows any other ones?

[oinky]

Hello icko!

You're right that not many FM Radio Kits are sold nowadays. I dare say that exactly zero of them are above average quality-wise. A few kits with either TDA7000, TDA7021T or TDA7088T (even stereo versions with TDA7040T PLL decoder) are sold here in CR, but I guess that's not helping much?

When I was about 10 years old, I built few FM-only radio kits featuring TDA7000 and LM386 IC as an AF amp. The receiver RF section was even a bit more complex than the one from electronics-diy.com - It had band-pass filter on the input, heh. Speaking from experience, any TDA70xx monolithic receiver needs to be preceeded with about 2 sharply tuned L-C filters to reach reasonable level of selectivity and even then it's kind of.. well, crappy one. Usable for local reception and/or VOX, though.. and fun to screw with.

[TBC...]

[oinky]

[ C*ntinued.. - Funnily enough, I though that there was 1000 chars posting limit ]
Note that the article also seems to be misleading: Looking at the spectrograms of TDA7000 or TDA7010T reveals that above pilot frequency there's nothing at the detector pin. So even if you connected the MC1310P to the AF output, you'd still get nothing except MONO RECEPTION while tuned to stereo broadcast. Frankly, I'd even like to be (somehow) proven wrong on this point, but.. [Anything above and including TDA7020T is stereo-capable if equipped with suitable decoder, of course.] I still have 2pcs of TDA7000 lying around here.

On a side-note, techdesign.be sells two Stereo/RDS Receiver Kits, ships to Europe, and the one with NXP TEF6901 IC appears to be quite superb in terms of FM reception. (to TDA7000 anyway. Almost anything is.) Not very cheap though...

Recently I fiddled with a Toshiba Single-Conversion FM Superhet IC (10.7MHz IF) Easily assembled radio, easy to adjust, works with a stereo decoder if desired and down to Ucc=0.95V. It's so simple that it can be build on universal PCB. (But maybe you'd still like to build a kit with nicely made circuit board as I did in my younger days. ) The downside is that it requires ceramic filter(s) for the IF stage (Digikey, Mouser have them.) Will post more if you're interested about the design / building.

[Cobra2]

http://electronics.dantimax.dk/Kits/...712843722.html

http://electronics.dantimax.dk/

Arne K

[oinky]

And another one:

http://www.geocities.jp/xbcyx938/e-kitenglish.html

The chip works down to 1.8V. Very suitable for portable use in fact. Propably uses two wirewound coils, so it's easy to align.

[icko]

Thank you Oinky and Arne.

I was on the way buying a TDA7000 kit, so thank you for talking me out of it.

Im going to check out the links and the TEF6901. Thanks again.