- AM FM Radio Kit Soldering Project Kit for Learning Practicing Teaching Electronics, Great STEM Project and Gift, New Version

I think anyone interested in radio and learning to assemble components would enjoy this. This would be a great project to introduce kids to electronics or just plain old using your hands. Assembly was very easy and detailed instructions are available via email. I used those as opposed to videos that are available. I'm an old guy but still enjoyed building this. The FM reception and fidelity punches way above what I expected. The AM is typical of AM in my area, not great, so this will depend on your location. Don't neglect turning the radio to improve reception. Using the end product with info of your choice off the net can open a new world for kids or anyone really to the amazing presence of radio waves in our lives. Strongly recommend this kit. Enjoy.

Overall the Vogurtime AM FM Radio Soldering Kit is one of the better soldering project kits I’ve made. I bought it to practice soldering with my new iron (a Hakko FX888). A few things in particular made this kit stand out above others that I’ve done in the past. First, the quality of the board. On other boards I’ve had the problem of traces and pads pulling up when I try to solder to them. Part of that issue is that I didn’t know how to properly set the heat on my old iron, but it was an issue I didn’t notice with this board. There were even components I needed to desolder and try again with because they weren’t in correctly the first time and I had no issues. For a $20 kit, I was very impressed with how well made the board was. Second, the instructions. Let me start by saying that the one-page instructions that come with kit in the box are not the full instructions. The full set of instructions are sent in a message or an email for the sake of saving paper. If you’re brand new to soldering I would recommend you use the full set, but if you know a little about electrical components, you can definitely get by with the ones that come in the box. That’s the other thing that impressed me with this kit. Other ones I’ve built were written in broken English and at times were difficult to understand, but that wasn’t an issue here. Anyone can read these instructions, see the pictures, and look at the board and figure out what component goes where and how it’s supposed to be installed. As such this kit would be great for someone brand new to soldering. Third, the finished product. It’s a working AM/FM radio! I needed to do a bit of troubleshooting to get it working, but if you take your time and make good solder connections you shouldn’t have this issue. It’s got good volume and sounds good what it is. I get about a dozen FM stations without any fine tuning of the knob and a handful of AM stations. I’m thinking about taking mine on my next camping trip, it’s the right size and weight for something like that. So, I’ve sung the praises of this project, but what doesn’t it do well? Simply put, resistors. The resistors could definitely be packaged better to be more friendly to those new to electricity and soldering. The instructions give the color codes for each value, but that can be a bit confusing if you don’t already know how to read them. I used my multimeter to figure out what the value of each resistor was. However, this is more of a nitpick. All in all, the kit is very beginner friendly and poses little to no challenges to first timers. I’d recommend this kit to beginners. It’s great for practicing your soldering skills. You can learn how to solder components with leads and wires to a board and by the end of it you’ll be a lot more confident with an iron. I think this kit is also good for people with more experience soldering. You can build it in a few hours, and it does offer a few opportunities for modification. I’m thinking about adding a headphone jack for example.

I assembled the kit with my 9 years old son . My son was very excited to solder all components. Its not complicated , very nice that it contains different types of components with clear installation instructions In our case the radio has problems to tune stations ,looks like resistors have inaccurate values and it effects xtal functionality In any case we are able to listen good quality radio signals

This was fun to put together and came with fantastic instructions. This is a great way to have an inexpensive but fun emergency radio. It is small, looks like a professional build albeit lacking the case, but that's what you want with this! My kids have fun with it as it is a bit of an oddity. My cats love the antenna and refuse to leave it alone. Thought I should mention that part. If I don't put it away i head the clank of cat paws slapping a metal antenna into the wall endlessly.

When i was a kid I tried doing a similar radio soldering kit, but after completing it, it didn't work. Always wanted to finish one that worked but never really had any need to. Now that I'm older and have need to solder things here and there for repair purposes, I just wanted something to practice on. Being mechanically inclined but not an expert at soldering by any means, I found this project pretty straightforward. The instructions were mostly clear and easy enough to understand but there was also a good video on YouTube I found of someone completing this kit that made understanding the color coding on the resistors a little easier compared to how they're explained in the instructions. If there was one thing that could be improved in my opinion, it's the labeling of the included materials. They give you product identification codes for all the included components but the components themselves aren't explicitly marked in the packaging, so in effect you have to learn how to identify everything based on their color coding or numbering. Some of the parts are very tiny however and the color coding isn't always easy to tell which color is which. Additionally the numbers on some of the parts for identification are extremely small (my eyesight isn't what it used to be). The instructions noted you could email them for more detailed instructions however, which i didn't try as i just wanted to start the build and figure everything out easy enough. Perhaps there's a more clearly marked component guide? There are photos of the completed product as well so that can be used as a backup reference if the instructions aren't making sense. The PCB is laid out and marked very well however, so it was easy to find where to put each component once you were able to figure out which component was which. Soldering was straightforward, nothing terribly difficult except maybe holding the adjustment knob assemblies in place. I'd recommend having small clips/clamps, perhaps some tape or blue sticky tack to hold the components in place while soldering as some of them don't have bendable legs to hold them in place. Overall enjoyed the build and am already looking for something more challenging next.