Elenco FM Radio Kit

This auto-scan FM kit from Elenco is fantastic. The instructions are well written and illustrated. Included is a good explanation of how the radio works and its different sections. All the components are organized for you in advance on a bit of cardboard. The main FM chip is surface-mount, but has been pre-soldered for you. The build process is straightforward, and all the parts are of reasonable quality for a kit like this. There is no case, but one could be 3D-printed if needed (though I think it is fine without a case, as the battery holder acts as a stand). The radio itself, once built, performs quite well after alignment (if you have bad performance, don't skip that step). The audio amp section is very loud. Tuning can be a little odd, as you can only "tune-up." You then reset the radio to start at the bottom of the band. Unfortunately you can't hold a specific frequency when listening to a marginal station. It will eventually lose lock and tune up. It works best with stronger stations. This is a great kit for beginners to advanced beginners. Intermediate builders will find it a relaxing build.

I bought this to just pass the time, and as a kid I used to put together Heathkit things so I thought the time has come to get back to my youth. This FM kit is really a work of art. The board is beautifully detail and it was well packaged, presented and laid out. The instructions are excellent and there is lots of additional information on radios in general and this radio in particular. I have little understanding of these things but I read all about it anyway and was fascinated. And thank goodness it actually worked at the end of all my somewhat amateurish soldering. They make many good points about having the right soldering iron and learning to solder well. I recommend paying attention to that part. And it was fun when I finished to turn it on and instantly hear a radio station. The sound is mediocre but it's not meant to be that kind of listening excellence. I recommend being patient and steady and all should turn out well.

I'm 28 with a fair amount of radio and electronics experience, though I hadn't soldered much in a while. I tried this kit for fun and to reacquaint myself with soldering before working on a more delicate project I have in mind. I found this kit to be very well-designed and easy to assemble. For the price, it is excellent. I had to detract one star because my kit included the incorrect screw for attaching the battery holder (not a big deal, but still annoying) and because I think there are other Elenco radio kits I'd recommend above this one. This kit would be great for a teenager's introduction to soldering (easy to follow assembly instructions, clearly labeled components and PCB, large soldering pads, a fun end-goal of producing your own radio), but probably just "okay" as an educational tool in teaching radio design to a young engineer. I understood the circuit descriptions and educational aspects found in the instruction manual, but I'm already familiar with those concepts. I think it'd be difficult to understand a lot of the provided circuit description and radio theory if I wasn't already familiar with the information. Another thing limiting this kit as an educational tool in radio fundamentals is the inclusion of an integrated circuit in the core of the receiver design. This makes everything more abstract from an educational perspective. I just checked around on Amazon, and there are several other Elenco radio kits available. Some of those are specifically "transistor" versions which involve no integrated circuits. That may mean twice as many components for you to solder, but it'd probably make for a better educational tool in teaching radio fundamentals. Two final tips: The kit features large soldering pads and lead-free solder. I support both of these choices for a beginner's kit (lots of space for your soldering iron, and no lead around children), but that combination can actually make soldering tricky because large pads sink more heat, and lead-free solder doesn't melt until higher temperatures. You'll probably want to use a chisel-tip on your soldering iron, and wet the tip with a bit of solder to help with heat transfer. If you have access to an oscilloscope, this is a fun little kit to probe around! The carrier frequency (~100 MHz) may be outside your scope's bandwidth, but most of the receiver circuitry operates at an intermediate frequency of 70 kHz, and the audio portion will be around ~1 kHz, both of which you can easily measure. So you can observe the ~1mV frequency-modulated 70 kHz IF signal on one channel, and on a second channel bring up the ~0.1V audio signal going to the speaker. Or probe anywhere along the chain rather easily. Fun stuff.

Very good kit with excellent instructions. Components like resistors, capacitors, and diodes are attached to a long card strip that identifies them individually by circuit designator, color codes and values. You can immediately determine that you have all the components that are required for the build. Large bulky components are bagged. This is a very good beginner to intermediate kit, but precision in soldering is required for components in the area of the surface mount IC which comes factory installed. Traces are close in this area and care is needed to avoid a solder bridge between pads. Most pads are larger than normal to make them easier to solder for a beginner. There is instructional material in front and back of the assembly instructions that is quite helpful and informative. We used this kit in scout camp this year and the only problems we had were related to excessive solder creating bridges. I would recommend looking at all traces and pads for bridges before installing the battery. As a radio, it's not great audio but it only has a small speaker. A tube of no-lead solder is included.

I've always wanted to learn to solder so I finally bought myself a soldering station and a few kits. The first kit I built was the Elenco Practice Solder Kit so that was my only previous soldering experience when I built this. A few notes: I used a Hakko FX888d soldering station set at 750 degrees. I used my own solder rather than the included lead-free solder. I took me a few hours to put together one afternoon. The negatives: The radio is very simple and can only tune via the scan, so it can be tricky to find a specific station. If you follow the order in the manual you end up installing tall components before some of the smaller ones, which can make it difficult to solder the smaller ones flush against the board if you have the board just sitting on the table. The sheet of resistors and capacitors makes it difficult to find the proper one because the component often covers the number and they aren't in numerical order. The actual radio receiver section is an surface mount IC that is already attached to the board, so you aren't really building the whole radio and learning all the theory of the different sections. The audio amplifier is also an IC. The documentation does try to explain how a radio works but I didn't study the section much. I am occasionally getting a clicking sound and I'm not sure if it is just due to the design of the radio or a flaw in my installation. The positives: I got the kit working first try with no problems. Comes with everything except general soldering equipment You first build the audio section and then test before finishing the RF section, which could help save some headaches troubleshooting. The audio is very loud and clear and the volume knob works great. There are a good variety of components to get practice with. The manual explains how to install the more unique pieces that a beginner may not understand. The instruction manual walks you through everything The kit is inexpensive. Radio reception is adequate. The volume knob has a nice click to turn the radio on when you turn the volume up from 0 (the potentiometer is also a switch which is neat to see if you have never seen how one works). Overall this is a good kit for a beginner who wants to get practice soldering and end up with something useful. As I write this I am listening to a local baseball game and the quality is just as good as using a regular radio.

Generally easy to learn with this product. I bought this to try to teach my son about electronics, and soldering. Great skill to be able to repair your household electronics when they break. He got the hang of it pretty quickly. Instructions were easy to follow. However I did find a few locations on the PCB when the trace and through hole pad just seemed to melt away. Seriously we kept the soldering iron temp only high enough to melt the solder but not nearly at max temp. And some of the spots just burned away within 3-4 seconds. I had to make jumpers in a few spots to continue the circuit. Guess it was a learning experience for him as well. Sometimes your repair isn’t straightforward and you need to be able to trace a PCB to see where the component leads so you can complete the repair. Anyway we ended up with a working radio as expected. He learned how to solder, as well as got some real world experience in dealing with cheaper components. That’s not a dig at the company- these are made to be learning kits and need to be cheap, so I don’t hold it against them. And he only got burned once lol. Anyone who uses a soldering iron regularly, knows you’re going to get burned, hopefully he learned not to do what he did again. So if you have zero experience this kit may not be easy for you. I had to supply my own flux to get the included solder to flow properly. Since they provided none I tried to solder without it at first and I couldn’t get simple components to bond, so used my own flux and everything worked fine. Again if you lack experience regarding soldering this may not be something you’d know or have. So yes it’s good for learning on mainly because it’s so cheap. But if you have zero experience and no one around who does it might take quite a bit to get the hang of it and finish the kit properly.

Great little radio project but not for a total newb beginner. There a few very small or fine solders and takes a steady hand and excellent soldering skills to complete properly. I bridged the IC socket and pretty much ruined the board trying to fix it. Though at the time my solder skills where pretty much non existent. I've improved markedly and will buy another kit or attempt to fix this one at some point in the future. I enjoyed the experience and learned a lot even though I failed to get it working properly (so far). As my skills improve, I have no doubt I will be able to repair my mistake and get it working properly. This kit is very well documented but expects some basic knowledge of circuit diagram reading and intermediate solder skills but walks you through each step very clearly. I would not attempt this as a "first project" or crash course in soldering lol. Start with something which IS considered "beginner" if you are just learning to solder. Then do this project after that. You'll enjoy it far more and have a working radio in the end! Nice Kit and well documented! Enjoyed working on it!

We purchased this radio kit for our 13 yr old son. The reason we chose Elenco was because we also purchased many different “Snap Circuits” kits for him and his little brother over the years and they loved them. The quality was always great so I figured this was a no brainer. We sat down one afternoon with all of my soldering tools and went to town. After maybe an hour or hour and a half we had it finished. To our surprise, nothing but static! There are also 2 other variants of the project which we tried as well. Needless to say my son was very disappointed. The following morning I de-soldered the entire kit, rechecked all of the parts values, and resoldered it before he woke up. Adjusted the coil several times and also ran the two additional variants again with the same result. Long story short, he was pretty let down so I logged onto Amazon and purchased a competitors radio, which soldered together in about 30 minutes and works great! Additionally, I own a recording studio and have been repairing/soldering electronics for over 4 decades... this was certainly a product issue. As a side note... my son DOES play with this radio... he uses it to hear frequencies that certain electronics give off when they are on.. all he hears are various high pitched squeals based on what he has the antenna near. None the less, let down with this Elenco product.