“Elenco also has snap circuit fm radios. Much easier and no soldering. We just built the fm radio included in the snap circuit extreme. Easy project. The fm ic tuned nicely. The sound is acceptable for demo purposes. Overdriven and distorted so not what you'd use for listening pleasure. Our 7 y.o. was full of excitement at the results. This is not a review of the fm radio kit. It's a suggestion for those who found this kit too difficult.”
“This was a fun kit to put together. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. The auto-scan tuning feature is unreliable, often locking onto a station, playing it for a second, and then losing it. The necessity to reset the tuner IC and scan from the bottom of the band is frustrating. Reception is very shaky as well; if I get a station lock while holding it and set it on the table near a computer or any other source of EM radiation, I lose the station.In addition, the PCB construction quality is not great. I lifted a pad just by moving a cap while soldering it in place. The traces should be heavier copper for a hobby kit.I will say that the sound quality once you get a station lock is really good. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to listen to a given station for more than a couple seconds at a time.”
“Always like these kids from Elenco and have done quite a few of these over the years. This one was toassist a child in learning about electronics. It took us probably more time than others but she did notknow anything! She had fun and she uses is all the time. Thanks!”
“i actually had to buy two of these as the first one was my first soldering attempts ever and it failed and was very messy soldering (though i was able to fix it after i got a multimeter and simply had more soldering time under my belt).as a radio it picks up nearly 20 stations it seems of low audio quality, if you want a good radio... go to the dollar store. this is an autoscanning function which i don't like very much relative to the AM kit version which you can find the old fashioned way by turning a knob.great way to learn soldering, i would suggest getting a cheap multimeter if you are getting into electronics though if you run into a problem though for the most part the pads are pretty big and the directions are clear and visual”
