“My son stole this from me and made it in a few hours. Fortunately, he had had some practice soldering in College. The solder is high quality. The sound is awesome!But the directions are NOT for beginners and too much soldering for a true beginner.”
“I had a blast making this kit. Took me roughly 4 hours, but the last hour was trouble shooting why the stations weren't coming in. Turns I had a bad connection for the 4 looped coil. I double checked all my soldering connections and it started working great. I'm 25 years old an never soldered or did anything like this. The instructions were very clear and easy to follow.”
“We did the step-by-step, the tests, etc. It did not work after all. I tried to contact the manufacturer twice for assistance and didn't hear back from them.I thought it was a good idea of a gift for kids 13-15 years old, but it was just frustrating and I will not buy it again.”
“My son learned how to solder with this. It did not work when he was finished, but we enjoyed building it. The instructions do a great job at explaining how FM radios work. There is a glossary and quiz at the end to go with it. Perfect for a homeschool science lesson!”
“Tried two kits., thinking I must be doing something wrong. I have plenty of experience building electronics from scratch. Bought this kit for my grandson. He gave up because he was unable to solder contacts. So I bought another kit along with rosin. Got it all together very neatly using an extra bit of rosin, but the radio it would not work. Touched the preinstalled chip on the board and got a few weak local stations here in the SF Bay Area, which quickly faded. Carefully rechecked all pieces, coil spacing, etc. with no luck. Should request a refund, but had fun building the kit.”
“This was my first attempt at this sort of project, and I'm glad I chose this product. The best part of this kit is that there are tests along the way to let you know everything is working as it should. Once I had the first section assembled and turned the knob to check the LED, nothing happened. But that led me to get a multimeter to troubleshoot where the problem was. Once I found the problem spots (where there was no voltage reading), I re-did the solder connection and voila! Then the second section was a piece of cake. I learned a lot, had fun with it, and got a real confidence boost after it worked. Now I get to design something cool to put it in, and then it's on to my next radio project. Definitely recommend for any other beginners out there.”
“I have been assambling it little by little and teaching kids about the components and what they do.Well planed quality components and very informative.The end product works and the bonus is that the kids loved working on it.Many many hours of fun! making it.Thank you for this relatively easy yet challenging kid.”
