I tested the loop with a xtal radio and it was able to pull in the usual crop of stations, so I knew I
had a winner. These sewing hoops come in two pieces, an inner hoop and outer hoop. You can easily squeeze
sixteen turns of 28 guage on the inner hoop with a little spacing between the turns. Once the inner hoop
has all the turns on it, test it, run the leads through the holes you pre drilled in the base of the loop
and then glue the outer hoop over the turns. You now have a really neat looking loop antenna that'll fit
any radio project. It's not the best loop for a xtal set, but for the MK 484 it has all the gain you'll need.
I connected the 365 vcap directly to the mounting screws at the underside of the top of the radio.
Then connected the tank to the pc board.
As you can see, there's only 5 parts on the entire board, eight altogether if you include the battery,
tank circuit, and xtal earphone connections!
As you can see, the MK 484 takes very little real estate. I may mount a headphone jack on the front panel someday, but for now I just hard wired the phones straight to the PC board. I just stash the phones inside the radio when not in use and lift the lid and pull them out whenever I wanna listen to this set. This is one of the few sets I have that I can place right in the middle of my computer station and listen to without tons of monitor noise. I have three monitors blazing and this set really handles it well.
That was a very used AA battery when I pressed it into duty for this radio. It's the only battery this MK 484 has ever seen, from breadboard to finished set. I left it on for three days and the MK484 just won't seem to kill the battery. I haven't had the set long enough at the time of this writing to see just how long a battery will last with this really nifty little circuit.
Coil Inductance Calculator Loop Antenna Calculator My Home Made Rig