“First one we received was defective - the tuner IC simply did not work. My son (age 10) build the second kit by himself and it works good. No real complaints, but the tuning sensitivity and repeat-ability could be better.”
“Radio was amazing. A little hard to complete but instructions were pretty clear.On the first try, radio was not working; without changing anything it worked the next day. Could be a reception issue.”
“Halfway through , the instructions tell you to put in a battery for a test of your progress up to that point. The test was a success! When I removed the battery after the test, part of the battery compartment broke off inside the 9v battery pins, ruining both the kit and the battery. Very disappointed. I would have loved to know if the radio would have worked in the end.”
“I got this to teach my 11 year old nephew how to solder and how to recognize and read resistors, capacitors etc.It served it's purpose. The solder that comes with it is very low quality - takes long time to get it going even with my professional soldering iron.The instructions is relatively easy to follow, if you know your electronics. I encountered a few problems:1) few of the mounting positions on the board didn't have anything going to it but the pictures in the instructions were full of parts. So, the design must have changed a little since the instructions were printed2) The PCB was low quality - it delaminated at a few spots making it difficult to get good contact3) The fit of battery compartment is terrible and partially blocks a few of the soldering joints4) tuning the radio is a pain and totally non-intuitive. You press one button to reset it to beginning and then press the other botton which starts an auto search to next signal. There is no way to manually step the band.5) The antenna contact was bad. I had to improvise and put in some conductive tape under it.It served it's purpose but not willing to buy any more of the kits due to low quality.”
“Great kit for older kids. had no problems following the instructions. Need to have a bit of experience with soldering, however, still a fun build with my 8 year old son who loves electronics. Only downfall was the pushbutton's for the radio channel scanning. They are a bit weak, but they function.”
