Haynes FM Retro Radio Kit (No Soldering)

When I saw the Brand name Haynes, I knew I was buying quality. I have used Haynes car and motorcycle manuals for decades, a handyman`s easy read Bible But times change and modern cars no longer can be fixed at home on Saturday afternoon or so easily. Microchips, sealed units and plastic saw to that.So, this Retro Radio is a refreshing return to old school.. When the kit arrived it looked fun for kids or maybe other people like me, in a wheelchair at home, wanting to stay active with their hands and mind with an interest in electronics.The parts are all nice quality, and even the card board case is well presented.But then I read the manual and I was very impressed by the highly professional logical dialogue, plain easy read diagrams and precise detail information- In short, the instruction manual blew me away

Manual difficult to read due to size. The layout of where the components go needs to be clearer. A list of the components and values would help rather than having to go back and forward in the book too. If you are wanting to just build a radio then you need to skip most of the manual and go to the last few pages. Otherwise you need to work through a number of different exercises to learn a little about the components and what they do.Once the radio was completed I was reasonably surprised at the sound quality and how easy it was to tune it. Unfortunately this was short lived. After about 5 minutes of use the sound stopped and smoke started to come from the speaker! This rendered the radio unusable and a very unhappy Granddaughter.Educational value good, overall value poor. I could have bought a number of superior radios with a warranty for the price.

Like the Arcade Kit. You may need some blue tac to keep the battery in place since they did not provide anything.Both Kits proudly talk about including a Haynes manual but in both cases the book is not that great.Like the Arcade Kit, it cheats by using a small PCB that contains IC that is the radio, plus an op-amp IC and your job is to marry these up on a breadboard.A breadboard is one method to knock up a prototype, not really a way of keeping a circuit together forever, because once you had finalised your design you would then make it permanent, by soldering it together on a PCB.So they could have provided a nice printed PCB where you soldered this stuff in rather than have a resistors hanging out of the finished unit which they do not tell you trim.The website points you to page 31 to build the radio but all you find is an awkward to follow diagram. And some text explaining how it works.A Magnifying glass may be handy. I just built the radio and skipped the "experiments" (something the arcade kit did not feature) because there is no spare parts and I know these parts can easily break.Sound is good, pity it’s not a DAB kit because how much long will we have FM?The case is cardboard by the way, something which is not apparent from promotional photography where they have done their hardest to make it look like a real case. This is a bit of a let down. And the promotional photography does not reveal the stupid aerial wire hanging out which is necessary if you actually want it to work.This kit is a bit different to the 5 transistor style of radios I was aware of in the early 1970’s & 1980’s. It took me about 3 – 4 hour to build. I am still tinkering with it.I should point out the battery doesn’t last long. A rechargeable PP3 only lasts for about 3-4 hours before it needs to be re-charged. I would be interested to know what is the differences between the Calendar kit and this version. Especially since one seems to be available for about a tenner and the other at twice that price and then some. One seems to use AA’s the other a PP3.I originally wanted the Arcade Kit. I have found I am getting more use out of this kit.

Fiddly but it worked.

Great but technical and I had to solder my own cables and lens to make it stay in the breadboard. But ones it's all in. It's working great 👍

I received this as a gift. It has the most useless set of instructions I have ever seen. I simply cannot build it due to the poor instruction manual that fails to discuss polarity of the board, has the red wire as neg and black as positive coming from the battery terminal. Each diagram shows the components in a different place on the board when you try to progress with the build through the booklet. It just does not make sense. They must have absolute buffoons working at Haynes to write the awful instruction booklet.

My neighbour bought this for his boy and asked me to give it a go. I'm an engineer involved in control systems and I'm also a raio amateur so I know what I'm doing. I started off my life of electronic with a Philips electronic engineer kit circa 1965. Any youngster presented with this would soon give up. The breadboard as it's called into which the wires are pushed is of poor quality with some holes refusing to accept wires. The manaul is in black and white, very small, no components listed. A single colour photograph of the finished unit would help so much. A card board case in this day and age of cheap plastics. I can remember my first radio with discrete components (this has integrated circuits which do not aid understanding) and it worked first time. Then I modified it and listened to Humber radio one sunday with people obviously talking to relatives on board ship. That spark of success was the start. This kit could finish off any enthusiasm a youngster might have. Haynes, this needs a rethink.