Super Regens BBC Research Report

[pwdrive]

Pretty grim:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1951-07.pdf

Lawrence.

[AlanBeckett]

Yes, that makes pretty grim reading.
Even if John finds one it's going to be no great shakes. At those signal levels you'd have to be under the Transmitter.

Alan

[Radio Fixer]

Well I had a brush with a Super Regen FM receiver and its longer ago than I thought, isn't it always.

[pwdrive]

Interesting IF frequency.

Lawrence.

[pwdrive]

There's a good article on the Fremodyne here:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~cool386/fre...remo1.html

Lawrence.

[AlanBeckett]

That's quite fascinating Lawrence, and completely passed me by originally.
There are circuits in my ancient Practical Wireless Circuits for various fm Receivers but not that sort I think.

Alan

[Radio Fixer]

Lot of detail in that article you found Lawrence ... I may find time to read it thoroughly. There was a large and excellent article, maybe 3 or 4 years back in Radio Bygones about making modern solid state circuits using the technique.

Here is part of the article I wrote all those years ago. I made PDFs by a devious route using CorelDraw and so skipped the restoration part (well most could have done it). It is my only radio where the chassis goes in from the bottom.


  Gil 1.pdf (Size: 37.16 KB / Downloads: 123)


  Gil 2.pdf (Size: 44.5 KB / Downloads: 51)

I didn't get any comments to my idea of how the circuit worked so either I was spot on (unlikely) or readers glazed over (most probable).

The second attachment misses a bit in that I asked other US owners of the set how theirs performed and the answer was no better than mine.

At the time I didn't know about the Proximity Fuse invented in the US for WW2 that used the super - regeneration technique . It made a very compact circuit, with high gain, that could be built into the nose of shells so that they could detect the presence of a target and explode without actually hitting it. So Armstrong's invention did find an important use. Somewhere I have read an article and making tubes, components and construction that could withstand the G forces was a major challenge.

Gary

[AlanBeckett]

At the time I didn't know about the Proximity Fuse invented in the US for WW2 ...

Actually they were invented by Pye then given away.

Alan

[Alan Douglas]

Here's a short bit from a report published by Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University on Sept. 20 1945. Google lists this but it hasn't been scanned so I just copied two pages. As of 1945 these events were fairly fresh in people's memories.

Google does show a restored movie made by APL at the time, detailing the work. I haven't watched it. I've seen books on the subject too.