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 – 29 January
I've gone social! At the top of many pages there is a +1 button.
This is a Google feature and is meant to improve search results. They figure that if
real people like a web page, and indicate so my clicking the +1 button, this will
be more meaningful to others searching for stuff like this. So do your hobby friends
a favor by clicking the +1 buttons on websites you like or found useful.
I'm putting my website on a diet! Over the years my pages have become too fat. The changes are
small, but improves the loading speeds of my pages, very helpful for my dialup visitors.
In short, I started by combining thumbnail images on my crystal sets
and tubes main page. I also took out a very heavy decorative
headline font and replaced it with a much lighter one. I'll be combing my 500 pages + for
more ways to cut the fat.
Happy New Year! In a couple of months (March) marks the tenth anniversary of me showing
off my homemade radios to all of you. Thanks to everyone for your kind words. I've added a
new domain to my stable of websites. I was finally able to register n2ds.com!
Not too much up there yet but I will add content now and again as I have time to
put it all together.
Here is a little project that came up quickly for me. A friend gave me this
Paragon RD-5 one tube radio. I immediately fell in love with this radio and
decided to restore it to working condition. It is a real hoot to tune and listen
to such an old radio. 1922 was a good year. More …
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!
Over the years, I have kept several websites. While electronics and radio are my favorite
interests, I have studied investing in general and mutual funds in particular. So I started
a site called mutualfundepiphanies.com to offer some of my
opinions on mutual fund investing. There are some links in blue on the left and right side of the center
column that will send you to sites for additional information.
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.
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!
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.
