Brian Sturges wrote:

Hi Steve, the kit uses varactor tuning for the range of 118 to 136 Mhz. It
has AGC and squelch controls. It's surprising that aircraft would be using
AM- especially at these high freqs.

There is a reason for that. AM is still used primarily for it's safety factor.
With FM there is what is known as 'capture effect' in which the stronger station
obliterates the weaker one.

Ramsey's website is www.ramseykits.com
I built the shortwave converter SC1C a couple years ago to catch a few sw
stations as I come home late from work once in awhile. It works ok as far as
converters go...
A scanner might be a good idea for this anyway. I had a Bearcat years ago,
and used to accidentally hear conversations from the early cell phones. Is
that still possible? It was fun- and made me feel guilty (I must be a good
citizen).
"N8KDV" wrote in message
...


Brian Sturges wrote:

Well, I just got my new Ramsey catalog this week, and I've been thinking
that the AR1C Aircraft Receiver kit might be a fun project. I live in a
fairly large city, so there is lots of air traffic around. I was
wondering
if this would be fun to listen to? Would the receiver still be usable
these
days- or are the channels now scrambled- or using some other technology
that
would make them un-listenable? Is anyone using this particular kit?
Thanks!

The aircraft band is still using AM and not scrambled. Is this a scanner
type of
radio, or basically a tuable receiver that only receives one frequency at
at
time?

You might be much better off with a scanner that receives the aircraft
band.

Steve
Holland, MI
Drake R7, R8 and R8B

http://www.iserv.net/~n8kdv/dxpage.htm