ElencoFM Radio Kit

This auto-scan FM kit from Elenco is fantastic. The instructions are well written and illustrated. Included is a good explanation of how the radio works and its different sections. All the components are organized for you in advance on a bit of cardboard. The main FM chip is surface-mount, but has been pre-soldered for you. The build process is straightforward, and all the parts are of reasonable quality for a kit like this. There is no case, but one could be 3D-printed if needed (though I think it is fine without a case, as the battery holder acts as a stand). The radio itself, once built, performs quite well after alignment (if you have bad performance, don't skip that step). The audio amp section is very loud. Tuning can be a little odd, as you can only "tune-up." You then reset the radio to start at the bottom of the band. Unfortunately you can't hold a specific frequency when listening to a marginal station. It will eventually lose lock and tune up. It works best with stronger stations.This is a great kit for beginners to advanced beginners. Intermediate builders will find it a relaxing build.

Excellent kit for the money. It's not too difficult, a teenager could put it together with adult supervision and help. Great directions and the components card has everything laid out nicely. 10/10 would recommend.

I'm 28 with a fair amount of radio and electronics experience, though I hadn't soldered much in a while. I tried this kit for fun and to reacquaint myself with soldering before working on a more delicate project I have in mind. I found this kit to be very well-designed and easy to assemble. For the price, it is excellent. I had to detract one star because my kit included the incorrect screw for attaching the battery holder (not a big deal, but still annoying) and because I think there are other Elenco radio kits I'd recommend above this one.This kit would be great for a teenager's introduction to soldering (easy to follow assembly instructions, clearly labeled components and PCB, large soldering pads, a fun end-goal of producing your own radio), but probably just "okay" as an educational tool in teaching radio design to a young engineer. I understood the circuit descriptions and educational aspects found in the instruction manual, but I'm already familiar with those concepts. I think it'd be difficult to understand a lot of the provided circuit description and radio theory if I wasn't already familiar with the information. Another thing limiting this kit as an educational tool in radio fundamentals is the inclusion of an integrated circuit in the core of the receiver design. This makes everything more abstract from an educational perspective.I just checked around on Amazon, and there are several other Elenco radio kits available. Some of those are specifically "transistor" versions which involve no integrated circuits. That may mean twice as many components for you to solder, but it'd probably make for a better educational tool in teaching radio fundamentals.Two final tips:The kit features large soldering pads and lead-free solder. I support both of these choices for a beginner's kit (lots of space for your soldering iron, and no lead around children), but that combination can actually make soldering tricky because large pads sink more heat, and lead-free solder doesn't melt until higher temperatures. You'll probably want to use a chisel-tip on your soldering iron, and wet the tip with a bit of solder to help with heat transfer.If you have access to an oscilloscope, this is a fun little kit to probe around! The carrier frequency (~100 MHz) may be outside your scope's bandwidth, but most of the receiver circuitry operates at an intermediate frequency of 70 kHz, and the audio portion will be around ~1 kHz, both of which you can easily measure. So you can observe the ~1mV frequency-modulated 70 kHz IF signal on one channel, and on a second channel bring up the ~0.1V audio signal going to the speaker. Or probe anywhere along the chain rather easily. Fun stuff.

I've always wanted to learn to solder so I finally bought myself a soldering station and a few kits. The first kit I built was the Elenco Practice Solder Kit so that was my only previous soldering experience when I built this.A few notes:I used a Hakko FX888d soldering station set at 750 degrees.I used my own solder rather than the included lead-free solder.I took me a few hours to put together one afternoon.The negatives:The radio is very simple and can only tune via the scan, so it can be tricky to find a specific station.If you follow the order in the manual you end up installing tall components before some of the smaller ones, which can make it difficult to solder the smaller ones flush against the board if you have the board just sitting on the table.The sheet of resistors and capacitors makes it difficult to find the proper one because the component often covers the number and they aren't in numerical order.The actual radio receiver section is an surface mount IC that is already attached to the board, so you aren't really building the whole radio and learning all the theory of the different sections. The audio amplifier is also an IC. The documentation does try to explain how a radio works but I didn't study the section much.I am occasionally getting a clicking sound and I'm not sure if it is just due to the design of the radio or a flaw in my installation.The positives:I got the kit working first try with no problems.Comes with everything except general soldering equipmentYou first build the audio section and then test before finishing the RF section, which could help save some headaches troubleshooting.The audio is very loud and clear and the volume knob works great.There are a good variety of components to get practice with.The manual explains how to install the more unique pieces that a beginner may not understand.The instruction manual walks you through everythingThe kit is inexpensive.Radio reception is adequate.The volume knob has a nice click to turn the radio on when you turn the volume up from 0 (the potentiometer is also a switch which is neat to see if you have never seen how one works).Overall this is a good kit for a beginner who wants to get practice soldering and end up with something useful. As I write this I am listening to a local baseball game and the quality is just as good as using a regular radio.