Simple Op Amp Radio

This is basically a crystal radio with an audio amplifier which is fairly sensitive and receives several strong stations in the Los Angeles area with a minimal 15 foot antenna. Longer antennas will provide a stronger signal but the selectivity will be worse and strong stations may be heard in the background of weaker ones.

Using a long wire antenna, the selectivity can be improved by connecting it to one of the taps on the coil instead of the junction of the capacitor and coil. Some connection to ground is required but I found that standing outside on a concrete slab and just allowing the long headphone leads to lay on the concrete was sufficient to listen to the local news station (KNX 1070).

Simple Op-Amp Radio Circuit Diagram

 The inductor was wound with 200 turns of #28 enameled copper wire on a 7/8 diameter, 4 inch length of PVC pipe, which yields about 220 uH. The inductor was wound with taps every 20 turns so the diode and antenna connections could be selected for best results which turned out to be 60 turns from the antenna end for the diode.

The diode should be a germanium (1N34A type) for best results, but silicon diodes will also work if the signal is strong enough. The carrier frequency is removed from the rectified signal at the cathode of the diode by the 300 pF cap and the audio frequency is passed by the 0.1uF capacitor to the non-inverting input of the first op-amp which functions as a high impedance buffer stage.

The second op-amp stage increases the voltage level about 50 times and is DC coupled to the first through the 10K resistor. If the pairs of 100K and 1 Meg resistors are not close in value (1%) you may need to either use closer matched values or add a capacitor in series with the 10K resistor to keep the DC voltage at the transistor emitter between 3 and 6 volts.

Another approach would be to reduce the overall gain with a smaller feedback resistor (470K). High impedance headphones will probably work best, but walkman stereo type headphones will also work. Circuit draws about 10 mA from a 9 volt source. Germanium diodes (1N34A) types are available from Radio Shack, #276-1123.