With my University Degree complete, I had much more free time to work on my superheterodyne reciever. Armed with more knowledge than my 2025 self, I decided it was worth redesigning most of it. Beginning with the frontend amplifier, I decided to try the cascode amplifier once again.

I recently purchased a Roland Rubix22 USB audio interface second-hand for my PC, and being that it has XLR and 1/4 inch mic jacks, I thought it would be fun to have my hand at making a microphone. While looking into the different types of microphones that exist, I chose to try making a ribbon mic.

Working on my Vacuum Flourescent Display (VFD) filament driver, I realized I have no easy way to test the saturation current of my home made inductors. Characterizing the inductors core material is necessary to creating an efficient transformer, so I built a test unit based on the principles of inductance.

After getting curious about vacuum tubes, nixie tubes, and later on vacuum flourescent displays (VFDs), I decided to go and give driving a VFD a shot. It seemed simple enough as I didn't need to use high voltages.

Being that I drive a 1/4 tonne pickup (ford ranger), the horn is rather weak and "car" sounding. To fix that, I gave my pickup a voice -- that voice being an air horn from Amazon. This is how the installation went.

The previous cascode design was insufficient, so I redesigned it with much better results.

When testing the 20m superheterodyne reciever, there was a lot of noise generated by the previous frontend amplifier design, so I have decided to re-design the frontend amplifier. In this approach, I utilize the cascode configuration.

To amplify the IF portion of the 20m superheterodyne recievers signal chain, I though I would give the W7ZOI and K3NHI's termination insensitive amplifier design a try.

Still unsatisfied with my crystal filter, I decided to order some 8 MHz crystals. This decision ended up producing the best crystal filter for the reciever.

For the 20m superheterodyne reciever, I need two mixers for the RF-IF stage and IF-Audio stage. My initial diode ring mixer design functioned as intended, but this time I chose to make it more compact and to use different diodes. ~ I also built two this time.