“Terribly difficult. Even with following directions and having then a friend come over who works in radio it still didn't work! Terribly disappointed and wasted my money and time”
“Well made kit to learn about electronics and soldering but not for listening. Did this as a project with my 8 year old grandson. He held the soldering gun and I fed the solder. Then we switched roles. Directions were very good with a lot of diagrams and troubleshooting guides. It came out a little sloppy since I'm not that experienced in soldering but by the end we got pretty good at it. Unfortunately the radio barely worked so I thought it was our soldering inexperience. I told him to leave it by me and I would see if I could get it to work better. I bought a second one thinking I could do better with my new expertise. I finished it myself figuring to swap them but it worked the same. I wound up giving him the original one we made.”
“This was a very nice experience for our daughter. She is learning about electronics but this project was to teach her to become pretty good with soldiering. Had to help her (initial safety instruction, initial practice on the side) with the 1st 3 components, after that she finished on her own (age 12, 1st time soldering). Turned out great, works very well for what it is. It picks up only a few stations but that is a combination of less than high-quality components and living in an area where we have a lot of interference (our problem, not the products, regarding interference and signal strength). We built a small box out of plexiglass and now it is a prized possession but the experience can never be replaced - great learning project! The benefits in not using higher quality components as we see it are: a) product cost savings, b) replacement parts (if you sorta mess anything up along the way) are cheap and you will not break the bank should you decide its time to just start over ;) At the end of the day, this was an excellent product and learning experience. Perfect!”
“I bought several Elenco kits, of increasing difficulty. This is my latest conquest. Took me just over an hour and a half. My volume knob is very touchy, but I think I burned it up with too much heat when soldering. Fun kit that works better than I expected. Take breaks between joints on the potentiometer, or get a heat-sink. Instructions were easy for this beginner to follow.”
“Just finished putting this together. There's lots of info in the documents on radio bands that I haven't read yet, but it is very cool to pick up station on something I soldered together myself. Cool.”
“The board is of very poor quality. The metal came off at many places during soldering and there were also several hairline cracks. I had a tough time troubleshooting and fixing all these.In the end it worked! And the documentation is good. That's why 2 stars.”
“got this for my 7 year old although i did the soldering myself, it was amazing to see his happiness when it worked for the first time.5 star to Elenco customer support, I took the item all the way to India where I ended up soldering swapping the position of two diodes and burning the IC as I was frustratingly trying to short it to test the speaker. Finally I emailed the customer support some pictures and they quickly responded that i need put the diodes correctly. I got the IC from the local market and it worked!Full stars to the kit as well as to Elenco. My suggestion is very important and I hope it will help a lot of customers - JUST PUT A COLOR PICTURE OF THE COMPLETED KIT IN YOUR USER MANUAL AND LOT OF PEOPLE LIKE ME WILL NOT MAKE SILLY MISTAKES. Anyways I am looking to buying more kits! Thanks”
