The first circuit you ever built...

[threeseven]

At about the age of 14-15 I built a 2 transistor FM transmitter that worked surprisingly well! First major project was a bench PSU, a design out of Practical Electronics. The case was more of a challenge than the electronics! I modified the design to use a single meter for economy, switchable between volts and amps, so I had to make a shunt. The meter was a very nice, bakelite bezel, Shinohara unit. The PSU still works, the only thing that has needed replacement is the reservoir cap, it started to bulge at the terminal end. In this day and age it was easy to replace it with a very nice high ripple component. The PCB is quite crude, although fibreglass, it was home made with a Dalo pen etc! So I'm tempted to remake it with a snazzy high quality, solder masked board that are now so easily available.

[Wendymott]

My first serious construction was a 2 metre converter ex RSGB manual with ECC84 rf amp..progressing to a 6cw4 nuvistor preamp.
The tx followed. ..with QQV03 20 pa..all of 15w am..circa 1966..
As with most of us in this group..we had much help from our contempories.
The latest item is a SSB tranceiver..with SMD.parts....nothing has changed..as far as the satisfaction in getting it going..goes...hope l live long enough to get it going propely..

[crusher19860138]

I had a Tandy 150 in one electronic board with all the components mounted on with spring terminals and connecting wires,had so much fun making up the various circuits from the manual.

[ionburn]

Like many others my first serious circuit building was via the Philips kit. I am currently compiling a list and photos of parts I still have from it (recently found the ferrite rod, transistor boots plus heatsink and LDR). I have the manual somewhere.

Very early on I was building simple transistor amplifiers and seeing how sensitive I could get them using a crystal earpiece as microphone. They seemed easy to put together and fascinating at the time. I also built multivibrators as well. These seemed foolproof. I will have a look to see what I can find.

The first repair I remember was grandad's radio. Taking the back off I saw a valve did not light up. I went to John Birkett's in Lincoln from home (a few miles south at the time). Buy a replacement then to Newark to fit (all by bicycle - scary at the time as I had never been on such fast busy roads). I was proud when it lit and the set burst into life!

[clay shooter]

I was thinking about this, this morning and it wasn't the pw seekit that I built 1st as I previously stated. It must have been in the early 70s that I built a crystal receiver using a salvaged diode a length of uninsulated garden wire wrapped around a pencil for a coil, no tuning capacitor! I couldn't afford one, and a length of old bell cable for hook up,and earth.
The aerial was another length of re purposed bell cable just shoved in to the tv aerial socket, all this was mounted on a wooden off cut with nails knocked in for mount the coil and diode. No soldering just twisted cable.
Did it work ? Surprisingly yes only radio two could be heard , but as I remember it was a clear signal.
I remember the first thing I heard through the earpiece was Tina Charles singing "I love to love "
Oh happy days! ��
Actually I've just googled Tina charles I love to love and it was realised in 1976 the year of stand pipes and drought

[Sideband]

Originally Posted by Sideband

After that came the reflex radio using OC45 and OC71. Built to a design from Practical Wireless in 1965.

...and here it is....as found and then after replacing the missing parts. Not exactly professional but it was 51 years ago.....

Many happy hours listening to Radio Caroline and Luxembourg back in 'the day'!

After the decimation of all the MW stations, not so much to listen to but Gold comes in well on 1548

[McMurdo]

I built a flashing LED from an electronic breadboarding kit, very unreliable breadboard that you had to build yourself.

[britishrocket]

Originally Posted by clay shooter

I was thinking about this, this morning and it wasn't the pw seekit that I built 1st as I previously stated. It must have been in the early 70s that I built a crystal receiver using a salvaged diode a length of uninsulated garden wire wrapped around a pencil for a coil, no tuning capacitor! I couldn't afford one, and a length of old bell cable for hook up,and earth.
The aerial was another length of re purposed bell cable just shoved in to the tv aerial socket, all this was mounted on a wooden off cut with nails knocked in for mount the coil and diode. No soldering just twisted cable.
Did it work ? Surprisingly yes only radio two could be heard , but as I remember it was a clear signal.
I remember the first thing I heard through the earpiece was Tina Charles singing "I love to love "
Oh happy days!

That's a great story. Amazing what can be done with so little. I can imagine the thrill you got when music came out of the earpiece. Tina Charles love to love is a quality track too!

Carl.

[ionburn]

Originally Posted by clay shooter

I was thinking about this, this morning and it wasn't the pw seekit that I built 1st as I previously stated. It must have been in the early 70s that I built a crystal receiver using a salvaged diode a length of uninsulated garden wire wrapped around a pencil for a coil, no tuning capacitor! I couldn't afford one, and a length of old bell cable for hook up,and earth.
The aerial was another length of re purposed bell cable just shoved in to the tv aerial socket, all this was mounted on a wooden off cut with nails knocked in for mount the coil and diode. No soldering just twisted cable.
Did it work ? Surprisingly yes only radio two could be heard , but as I remember it was a clear signal.
I remember the first thing I heard through the earpiece was Tina Charles singing "I love to love "
Oh happy days!

Sounds good

It reminds me of my first external long wire aerial. On first tests I was amazed that, after finding I was only hearing one station on a crystal set (unluckily foreign so I could not understand what was being said), I reduced the component count until I only had a diode and earpiece on the end of the wire and was hearing the station just as well! Obviously a tuned aerial but I would love to be able to replicate now to work it out so I understood better.

[ToneArm]

I have always loved listening to the radio and when i was in primary school I was given a kit to make a crystal radio. Components fitted between springs so no dangerous hot soldering irons! I remember being amazed when it actually worked.

First proper construction was a pipe detector, circuit from a magazine might have been everyday electronics. It worked but i remember quickly being disappointed in its capabilities because what I really wanted was a metal detector!

[Bobsound]

I started trying to build one valve radios using DF9x valves which never seemed to work. The one circuit that stands out in my memory, which I built some time later, was a TRF radio from, I think, a PW design which used two EF91s (my favourite valve) feeding a germanium diode and an ECL82. This set worked very well which is why it has stuck in my memory. While I still enjoy construction, I no longer get the amazing buzz I used to get when a project worked!

[Dai Corner]

Was the Philips electronics kit the one with the transistors mounted on PCBs about an inch square? If you thought you'd 'fried' one you could send it off to Philips in Croydon with a postal order and they would test and return it.

If I'd known about soldering and component shops it would probably have been cheaper to replace the transistor!

[TonyDuell]

The Philips EE1050 and EE1003 series kits had lockfit (mostly) transistors on little square PCBs. The older EE8/EE20 kits had loose AC126s, etc which had long enough leads to reach to the spring terminals without needing the little PCBs.

Later kits in the EE2000 series (same spring terminals as the EE1003, etc but on a plastic baseboard, not hardboard) had other components, LEDs, FET, Varicap diode, etc on little square PCBs.

Somewhere I have a sheet from Philips showing how to test the EE series transistors using components from the kit. I think it was basically put the lamp as the collector load and apply base current through the pushbutton switch and a resistor. It would detect shorted and open transistors (but not low gain, but that would not be a common fault with these kits).

I never heard of the Philips test/replacement service for these transistors, but there was a spare parts pricelist and you could order anything from Philips. There were people who would order the 'custom' parts (coils, cards, etc) from Philips and get the R's and C's from a local electronics shop rather than buy the add-on kit.

[Andrew B]

I had a Tri-Ang "Trionics" set up with a longwire. I spent most of my time with the "reflex" receiver listening to Radio Luxembourg.

[See_Mos]

Originally Posted by bluepilot

I can't remember whether it was the first but certainly an early circuit I built was a high frequency power supply for my model railway. I got the circuit from Railway Modeller. Must have been about 1970. It was a valve-based 100kHz oscillator, the idea being that with a few capacitors it would be possible to have lighting in the carriages even when the train was standing still. The second harmonic of 100kHz is 200kHz which was also the light programme and with quite a few yards of track it radiated quite well. The result was no-one in the area could receive the light programme. Luckily I realised what was going on before anyone turned up to investigate the interference.

I built one of those for a friend. It worked very well but the TVI killed reception several houses away so he couldn't use it in the evenings!

My first project would have been in the very early sixties. It was the simplest of crysatl sets built from the circuit in Caxtons Modern Radio & Television Vol 1 P88 which my father gave me. The coil was a matter of trial and error. Later I built a push-pull crystal set that was a project in PW. Next came a two valve TRF which controlled the reaction by varying the screen grid with a potentiomer, I'm still trying to find the magazine article but can't even remember which magazine it came from.

From there I went on to build the Mullard 5-10 and preamp, transmitters etc and in my late teens disco amplifiers and lighting controls.

Now retired I am still actively repairing radios etc.