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Old March 24th 04, 07:19 PM
Tom Bruhns
 
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Thought I posted a reply yesterday, but it doesn't appear to have made
it.

Before we head off into the weeds with all sorts of opinions, how
about some clarification? I'd be interested in answers to several
questions, and suspect others will add more.

o What sort of distortion levels and signal to noise ratio are you
wanting to achieve?

o What level of desired signal will you be able to deliver to the
receiver's input terminals? Will it be strong enough, and free enough
from multipath, to make the desired distortion and SNR practical?

o What levels and relative frequencies will strong potentially
interfering signals be? -- Let's hope there's nothing significant on
an adjacent channel, and nothing really big on alternate channels
(+/-400kHz).

o How skilled are you in RF and digital construction, and what tools
do you have available for design, construction and turn-on/alignment?

o Do you want the receiver to be portable and battery-powered, or can
it be relatively large and line/mains powered?

(o Why would you not just buy a good FM tuner, and perhaps just build
a preselector if alternate-channel stations were a problem?)

Cheers,
Tom


(Alan Horowitz) wrote in message ...
a city I visit frequently -or more precisely, it's exurban outskirts -
has only one mellow-Jazz FM-broadcast station, the only one for many
hundreds of miles.

thus I have decided to build my own single-station hi-performance
receiver to get the one station.

I know enough to know that ideally, the bulk of the gain,
directionality, selectivity should be at the antenna itself. Or even
more to the point, tower height. At least ideally. And
hi-performance single FM channel yagi's are easily spec'd from a
number of antenna houses. So that issue is not being placed on this
table.

The rest of the gain budget is.

Let the discussions begin. For example, what approach do the known
"name" receivers (Kloss Model One, GE Super Radio) use? can a
homebrewer do better?
Which commercial house builds the best resonant chambers for the 108
Mhz frequency? Can be be done easily at home? how about the
demodulation and audio portions?