Here is a little secret that will help you build small radios with ease. They can also outclass almost all of the bought aftermarket radio sets if you take your time and have some fun with it.
Surface mount parts (or known as SMD) are the key; capacitors, resistors, diodes, small IC’s and the like. They will give you a pre-sized, raised shape that you may paint or leave as is. They come with numbering that you may like to keep and also have outer edges done in silver…no more drawing a straight line with an eyelash super glued to a toothpick! Some sites to buy from are Mouser, Digikey, and Tayda. I would go with Tayda for cheaper parts and shipping prices, you are not going to need these parts to work after all. All my parts are harvested off of non-working electronics, remember that many older printed circuit boards do not use smd parts but through hole/DIP…these will be too large for our purposes.
SMD diodes are great for tube style radios: http://product-image.tradeindia.com/00265166/b/0/SMD-Diodes.jpg
SMD capacitors: http://www.ryron.org/medias/img/mlcc-smd-capacitor.png
SMD resistors: http://giaha.vn/Data/upload/images/linhkiendientu/Resistors/product_l188.jpg
SMD IC’s come with little wire leads that are great for wire connectors: http://pimg.tradeindia.com/00179636/b/0/Smd-IC.jpg
I did not get this idea off of a magazine or article but thought it up after working on an electronic flyback driver I was building. I am not sure how much this technique is used or if it isn’t at all, but I guarantee you will get great results with a bit of time and practice.
Sorry about the image quality/radio quality. This was my first radio that I made a few years ago, all the others seem to be in storage, and it was already mounted in a building before the picture was taken so it was hard to get the angle. This one is based on an old non-military Italian radio set the HG Division sometimes used while they were in Italy.
