AM FM Radio Kit Soldering Project Kit for Learning Practicing Teaching Electronics, Great STEM Project and Gift, New Version

Overall the Vogurtime AM FM Radio Soldering Kit is one of the better soldering project kits I’ve made. I bought it to practice soldering with my new iron (a Hakko FX888). A few things in particular made this kit stand out above others that I’ve done in the past.First, the quality of the board. On other boards I’ve had the problem of traces and pads pulling up when I try to solder to them. Part of that issue is that I didn’t know how to properly set the heat on my old iron, but it was an issue I didn’t notice with this board. There were even components I needed to desolder and try again with because they weren’t in correctly the first time and I had no issues. For a $20 kit, I was very impressed with how well made the board was.Second, the instructions. Let me start by saying that the one-page instructions that come with kit in the box are not the full instructions. The full set of instructions are sent in a message or an email for the sake of saving paper. If you’re brand new to soldering I would recommend you use the full set, but if you know a little about electrical components, you can definitely get by with the ones that come in the box. That’s the other thing that impressed me with this kit. Other ones I’ve built were written in broken English and at times were difficult to understand, but that wasn’t an issue here. Anyone can read these instructions, see the pictures, and look at the board and figure out what component goes where and how it’s supposed to be installed. As such this kit would be great for someone brand new to soldering.Third, the finished product. It’s a working AM/FM radio! I needed to do a bit of troubleshooting to get it working, but if you take your time and make good solder connections you shouldn’t have this issue. It’s got good volume and sounds good what it is. I get about a dozen FM stations without any fine tuning of the knob and a handful of AM stations. I’m thinking about taking mine on my next camping trip, it’s the right size and weight for something like that.So, I’ve sung the praises of this project, but what doesn’t it do well? Simply put, resistors. The resistors could definitely be packaged better to be more friendly to those new to electricity and soldering. The instructions give the color codes for each value, but that can be a bit confusing if you don’t already know how to read them. I used my multimeter to figure out what the value of each resistor was. However, this is more of a nitpick. All in all, the kit is very beginner friendly and poses little to no challenges to first timers.I’d recommend this kit to beginners. It’s great for practicing your soldering skills. You can learn how to solder components with leads and wires to a board and by the end of it you’ll be a lot more confident with an iron. I think this kit is also good for people with more experience soldering. You can build it in a few hours, and it does offer a few opportunities for modification. I’m thinking about adding a headphone jack for example.

The instructions included are pretty good. It wasn't too hard to figure out where each component would go. I used my voltmeter to measure resistors. The pcb is a pretty good quality, didn't have any issues with it. I questioned one short/bridge on the pcb and emailed customer support. I got an answer within 24 hours confirming the PCB was correct and not defective. I took me about 2.5 hours to complete this, dragging my time to enjoy the process. I found a hole in the AM antenna mounting to be kind of small, not easily fitting the screw through, so I drilled it around a bit to make it somewhat bigger. I used good quality flux, solder and solder gun without any issues. The radio worked great in AM and FM modes, which was exciting. The speaker was loud enough and picking different stations was pretty easy. I see that some versions of this kit have the AM antenna positioned at the top and some have it positioned on the side. Mine is positioned vertical on the side, and I wish it was horizontal on the top instead to have better reception range for AM. Having said that, I have some previous experience with basic soldering, but this is the first time for me to assemble my own radio. I like the look of the final product, and received some compliments on it from the family.

The build and quality of the project is well! Including the instructions! Very easy to read and with pictures and references. However, performance wise the project is weak. The FM side works ok at best and tuning the AM side is like shooting in the dark. But I'm not complaining, it's a $20 radio kit and the point of it is to understand basic electronics.

When i was a kid I tried doing a similar radio soldering kit, but after completing it, it didn't work. Always wanted to finish one that worked but never really had any need to. Now that I'm older and have need to solder things here and there for repair purposes, I just wanted something to practice on.Being mechanically inclined but not an expert at soldering by any means, I found this project pretty straightforward. The instructions were mostly clear and easy enough to understand but there was also a good video on YouTube I found of someone completing this kit that made understanding the color coding on the resistors a little easier compared to how they're explained in the instructions.If there was one thing that could be improved in my opinion, it's the labeling of the included materials. They give you product identification codes for all the included components but the components themselves aren't explicitly marked in the packaging, so in effect you have to learn how to identify everything based on their color coding or numbering. Some of the parts are very tiny however and the color coding isn't always easy to tell which color is which. Additionally the numbers on some of the parts for identification are extremely small (my eyesight isn't what it used to be). The instructions noted you could email them for more detailed instructions however, which i didn't try as i just wanted to start the build and figure everything out easy enough. Perhaps there's a more clearly marked component guide?There are photos of the completed product as well so that can be used as a backup reference if the instructions aren't making sense. The PCB is laid out and marked very well however, so it was easy to find where to put each component once you were able to figure out which component was which. Soldering was straightforward, nothing terribly difficult except maybe holding the adjustment knob assemblies in place.I'd recommend having small clips/clamps, perhaps some tape or blue sticky tack to hold the components in place while soldering as some of them don't have bendable legs to hold them in place.Overall enjoyed the build and am already looking for something more challenging next.