Hello all,

I was playing around and saw that my junk box had all the parts so I started
tossing this together:
http://newenglandqrp.org/files/w1aw-receiver.jpg
The problem is (well I think it's a problem) is that I'm all the way down to
a 10pF cap for the crystal trimmer and the highest frequency I can get out
of it is still less than 3580kHz. Pleae correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm
thinking that the 20uH inductor is supposed to pull the colorburst crystal
high in frequency then the adjustable cap should be able to tweak it back
down. Higher capicitance does result in even lower frequency. I made the
20uH inductor by wrapping 17 turns on an old amidon FT50-61 ferrite toroid.
I don't have any way to measure the inductance, but by my calculations it
should be approximately 20uH. Is the ferrite saturating and messing things
up? I see that touching the 20uH inductor it will cause the frequency to
shift down as much as 4-5kHz.

I believe this is direct conversion and that the crystal should exactly
match the desired station (3581kHz) I want to recieve, that's right isn't
it? Maybe this is close enough? I have to wait til tonight to see if I can
actually hear anything.

I mostly tinker with PIC chips so this is pretty much out of my league. I
just wanted to throw it together and listen to the nightly report. It seems
to be working as I can touch the 7.8uH coil (40 turns on a T50-2 toroid) and
I get increased noise out of pins 4 and 5 on the NE602 (hey it's what I had
in the box ;-). I haven't added the 386 yet, I just wanted to test the
front end first. I'm cramming it all on a RS 276-259 pc proto board, but
the layout is coming along pretty well for not planning it out. ;-) Thanks
for helping.