bg wrote:
The IF amplifier also needs to be checked for the correct IF frequency,
because your tunnig L and C was designed to track at the IF frequency and
it will not track correctly at another frequency. Those IF trannys are very
tempting for inexperienced people to tweak.

With any of the LC tuned receivers, the inductance of the RF coil (which is
probably the loopstick), and the inductance of the oscillator coil is set
while the tunning capacitor is fully meshed. This is at the lowest RF
frequency. The RF and Osc trimmer caps are set at the high end of the dial
or when the tunning cap is fully unmeshed. Repeat the steps as neccessary to
get your best results at the extreme ends of the tunning range. If the
tracking goes bad in the midband, some tunning caps have slotted plates so
that the plates can be bent to improve the tracking, but this method is not
to common for low frequency cheap receivers.


Unfortunately, the problem cannot be fixed by any amount of tweeking.
It doesn't matter where the main tuning cap is set, and all the other
adjustments peaked at that point, oscillator, IF, trimmer caps, etc.
The result is always poor reception in the middle of the band. That's
why I can't figure it out. It doesn't make sense that with every
adjustment peaked at 800KHz, that point is sill weak. Yet if I sweep
the antenna coil and cap, it looks fairly flat on a scope. In other
words, there's nothing wrong, except it doesn't work.

-Bill