Finally got the audio amplifier working, there are still some tweaks required but almost there. In the end I eventually discovered that I’d somehow killed the LM386 chip, so I replaced it, but second time round used an IC holder then slid the chip in, not making the same mistake twice!! After all of the resoldering as I disconnected and reconnected wires and components to find the issues it’s not looking pretty.

Finally got round to moving the audio amplifier project on to perfboard. I actually wanted to use stripboard, but TWICE managed to order the wrong thing somehow! I really haven’t enjoyed using perfboard, I’ve been using wire-wrapping wire and have found the whole process incredible faffy and fiddly. I’ve been using small pieces of wire and offcuts of components to connect between the holes, but that again is really faffy. I’ll probably end up using perfboard again as I’ve bought a few, but wish I’d bought the stripboad.

I’m having real issues getting this to work, I’ve got very quiet audio and a lot of crackling. I’m working through the various issues at the moment, nothing like a bit of problem solving!

This is the second module I’ve built for a direct conversion receiver based on a talk by ‘Nick the Vic’ M0NTV, it’s an audio amplifier using the LM386 chip. I decided to prototype it on breadboard and have investigated various configurations using the chip which has been a great learning experience, once I settle on a final configuration I’ll transfer it to perfboard and put it together using the potentiometers.