My second contact this evening was with WN5Y, a high school teacher in Pampa, TX. Looking him up on QRZ.Com yielded the URL to his website. Take a look and you’ll see that solid state receivers can indeed glow.
Dave, you see, sells what he calls The Electroluminescent Receiver Kit. His receiver uses low noise dual gate MOSFETs in which all the drain/source current travels through an LED. If a circuit is working properly, its LED will glow brightly. If the circuit is not working, the LED is dark, just as dead tubes were dark in the old days.
The kit is only $90, but if you really wanted to, you could build the thing yourself from the excellent circuit diagrams and description that Dave provides. Chances are, though, that you’ll end up spending a lot of time and probably close to $90 rustling up the parts yourself. In addition to the basic kit, you could easily spend another $90 on accessories, including an S-meter and digital frequency display. When all is said and done, though, you get a receiver that not only works well, but also looks pretty cool.
Dave also has several pages describing a transmitter to be used with his receiver. There’s no kit available for the transmitter, though.
Another cool feature of Dave’s website is his links page. On the page, you’ll find links to a bunch of sites that cover basic electronic construction techniques, including soldering basics, and QRP projects.
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