The Superheterodyne Radio
Here's a little Christmas present for you! I've just wrapped this up (PUNS!) and it's ready for your enjoyment. Go on. Open it!
I worked to get this done for public release Christmas Morning, so you'll not have a ton of early viewing time. My apologies there. But I hope you like it! This is such a cool concept to me, and I think it deserves some more attention.
The Superheterodyne Radio: No really, that's it's name (YouTube)
Comments (11)
On a sidenote: In German, a capacitor is called "Kondensator", interesting to know that that terminology was also used in English once.
It's also called Condensator in Russian
Amazeballs vidya!
Although nowadays tuning done in software, super heterodyne is still used: e.g. I work for Silicon Labs, and some, if not all of our radios are definitely superhet. The demodulation is much more advanced (and purely software), and it can differentiate between image and carrier, making image rejection even better (look for IR calibration if you're interested)
Thanks for the fun science tour for Christmas morning (it’s Christmas already, here in the future :-) ). I too like the old schematics, and enjoyed just as I was thinking “cycles per second” to explain beat frequencies in came the schematic with its 445kc! Merry Christmas, Ewen.
Thanks for another great video -- I never heard of this technique and it's awesome!
I've repaired antique radios for the last 40 years and the issue is the capacitors 99% of the time, occasionally a tube goes bad but that is actually fairly rare, the poor tubes get all the blame, but the paper, wax and electrolytic capacitors are pretty much nearly always the REAL culprit! - By the way, it's the capacitors in newer stereo equipment as well, such as the late 70's silver face audio components. So don't just plug in that old radio, amplifier or other vintage electronics gear - replace the caps first, then you don't smoke the hard to find tubes, transistors, transformers, tweeters, etc. needlessly! Some parts that folks are blowing up this way are not available at all.
Did you notice that there were new caps in the shot below the chassis? :) This was the first antique radio I ever messed with, and it was the first to be re-capped, as well. All with basic capacitors from Fry's, but then again it's essentially an All-American 5 so there weren't many to begin with. It's been working pretty good ever since!
This was very good (“something all physicsy,” ha!). BTW your panning shots are so good.
Nicely done!
Funny that the radio is called "Transitone", but is in fact a tube radio, not a transistor radio ;-)