Welcome to Dave's Homemade Radios
Hello friend. My name is Dave Schmarder. I am the owner and operator of makearadio.com. My homemade
hobby radio website has been on the net since 2002. Yes, this is the home of that crazy
guy of German heritage that builds all those radios.
This website is about the homemade radio projects that I have built. I show all the circuits
and offer good quality pictures. Each project has a description added. I did all this so you,
the radio builder hobbyist would have some good plans.
This is an active website. It is tended to and updated on a weekly basis. Starting in early
2010, makearadio.com was transformed into an ad supported website. The income helps offset the
hosting costs as well as a little for me.
The Latest From Dave – 22 February
Next month celebrates the 11th year of my website. It has grown quite
a bit, thanks to friends like Nick Strong, G0CWA. I've been working on
a couple of my other website projects. Not much to report right now, but
keep an eye on the right side of this page for the newest projects and
articles. With over 500 pages at makearadio.com, I wouldn't want you to
miss anything.
Remember that crystal set you made with your dad or grandpa? I remember my experiences
to this day. In early 2002 the crystal
set bit me again. This time I really got excited and started building one set right after another.
I was going to stop when I built a couple of radios that would display well. But there was no
way I was going to quit. So here I am at 78 radios and counting! I hope you find one that
you would like to build. See what I have made to show you.
Soon after I started building crystal sets, the lousy summer band conditions convinced me that I
should expand my activities in to active devices. Encouraged by my web visitors, I built
a bunch of tube radios to experiment with. I didn't build regenerative radios when
I was a kid, so this was new territory for me. I am pleased with the outcome and I hope you
are too. So, I proudly present my tube radio main page.
Transistors? Bah humbug. But I've heard that they have become popular and more and more
people have switched from tubes to transistors. So far there is only one radio, but I hope
to add more. So please accept my meager attempt for now
I love tube amplifiers. But as my solid state section, my amplifier section has only one
example to show you. It is a nice small, low powered audio amp. Several others have
built this design and are quite happy. So check out my amplifier section and encourage
me to make more!
Loop antennas have been in my family since I was a little guy. I still have the big red
loop that my dad built and that started my interest in these magical devices. I built some smaller
loop antennas to connect to my old time radios to improve my reception.
My loops are beautiful!
I also have a website called ichweissnicht.com which has
a bunch of banner graphics that I made, plus a DIY home page template. I have a section
that I call "EBayisms" that are funny things found on the popular auction website. To
round out the site, I added some product reviews.
For a complete list of sites that I built, check out my Websites Portfolio Page.
As someone that is interested in the topic of homemade radios, I wish to extend an invite
to join other like minded people at a forum that I operate, called
The RadioBoard!
When registering, use authcode: makearadio
I also want to invite you to the other sections of The RadioBoard website including
the RadioContest section.
Here you will see some more very nice examples of well built homemade radios.
Also, new on the site is a section that I have named
The Best of the Best.
Over the more than 5 years of The RadioBoard Forums, there have been some
real outstanding posts by our members. There are some popular technical threads
that deserved a better spotlight. So I took those posts and boiled them down
into some nice articles. As time allows, this section will become larger.
—or—
Please donate via PayPal, if you like my website or found my e-mail reply useful. Thanks.
(Donations are not tax deductable.)
