Building Kiev Kyiv 4 Киев 4 Soviet AM Transistor Radio Kit TRF Set 

All the sellers sold out within a day of this video being posted.

It's simple. In early USSR there were only monocolored resistors with print on them and in late USSR color code appears. And these kits were completed with those resistors which were in storage. Basically, this kit could include color code resistors or monocolor resistors with print, that is why it is mentioned in the instruction.

So much better than those radio kits which are just an IC and a bunch of support components.

I was surprised that M20 resistor isn't universally understandable :). The metric prefix simply doubles up as a decimal point.

beautiful! just turned on to your channel via mr. carlson's lab. an old man, senior, interested in electronics science stuff since a kid. can't really do all this myself but watching your meticulousw display brings me back to my electronic engineering dreams and you know, minute by minute, second by second, sir, it's just like i'm doing the stuff myself. :) THANK YOU!

Wow, I had a very similar kit when I was a child. The only difference, as far as I can tell, was the case color, mine was light gray. I still remember myself sitting with my best pal in my uncle's workshop, trying to get it working. Thanks for bringing back good memories, cheers.

25:25 Actually you're correct, Б is really B in English, Б=Base, Э=Emiter, К=Collector.

Класс! Досмотрел до конца. Горжусь, что жил в СССР. Сейчас такое не делают, один Китай!

This board looks tin coated copper. After buffing it with steel wool, I use to coat it with a layer of varnish - powdered pine rosin or shellac flakes disolved in 92º etil alcohol. It prevents further oxidation and helps the solder to flow properly, aside of the nice smell. :) About these radios, they're really fun. I got a Yunost KP101 that I got for parts - only the case and speaker and I'm in process to collecting the parts and reproducing the board in order to build it properly.

'K' stands for Kilo-ohms, 'M' stands for Mega-ohms, when the digits are on the left of the designation, it's 'digit * designation' when the digits are on the right of the designation, it's 'digit * designation one lower' additionally, M on capacitors is for uF, and G on capacitors is for mF (1000x uF) but those designations on capacitors are way more rare then the designations on the resistors which were standard in the soviet union so k10 = 100 ohms 1k0 = 1k M10 = 100k 50M = 50uF G50 = 500uF 1G = 1000uF also note that the last digit on resistor codes may represent resistor tolerance when it's a letter instead of a digit.

Lots of sensitivity no selectivity. But who cares. I would have loved one as a kid. So I might get one!

That font used for the instructions brings back memories :)

Дата изготовлениa is date of production, (second row left from the children logo) so it's february 1991. If I read it well. And you're doing well with the letters Б really is a B, like bee.

It would be neat to see it perform on one of shangos desert trips.

Small coil on the ferrite antenna or as russians call it "connecting coil" you may consider as an impedance transformer - from large impedance of the tuning tank cirquit to the low input impedance of the first transistor stage and depending on the input impedance of the first stage any receiver topology may use one or not.

Heavy duty...we had a proverb in Poland as to the Soviet era gear - "gniotsja ne lamiotsja" which in fake Russian says "it can bend but never break!"

There are no build videos on this radio. I bought the same kit off of Ebay about a year ago and I was reluctant to put it together for fear of screwing it up. I scoured YT looking for a decent video on this kit but none were found. I think now I will give it a shot. Thanks, Shango for uploading this video. I had a Ukrainian woman look over this kit and she said this was not a cheap set according to the price tag. I don't think it should be compared to the crappy Chinese kits that are out there.

ОСT in "OCT 17-847-80" means Industry Sector Standard (Otraslevoy STandart). Everything was built according to some kind of standard, either State or Industry Sector, or (less common) TU's (technical provisions). The manufacture date is written with a pen and is 2/91; The batch No. is written with a pen and is 7/2. So that was built in February 1991 from parts available (which could be made anywhere from 70s to 90s). The recommended price was 8 roubles as per packaging.

Analogs of the 332 battery: LR10, LR21, R10, and FBS-0.25.

I'll finish watching later. Early impressions. Back in the USSR! You don't know how lucky you are, boy! Impressive kit! The "new" Heathkit could have learned a thing or two from this. That ferrite rod is awesome as you say. Only one example of the excellent overall part quality. The documentation ain't too shabby either.

"СТАРТ" (the same in English "Start" ) it was a long series electronic kits for child. The number after "Start" means what device it is, for example 7229 - radio, xxxx - digital clock, xxxx - generator, xxxx - digital thermometer and so on, and so on... I built many of these in childhood, but never seen this radio. A332 battery seems it is R10 now, but not very popular.

The kit was composed in 91, probably from 1980s parts. EDIT: Resistors are quite simple - unit name (R, K, M) stands at the decimal point place. So M20 = .2M = 200k, 4k7 = 4.7K, 200R = 200.0 Ohm, R47 = 0.47 Ohm and so on....

Not only it was designed very well, it sounds great! the stationes sounds very clear with no hiss or noise.

Man I don't remember 1980 being so much longer then the rest of the years, I mean 840 DAYS! Must have had a couple of leap months.

Love these kits and your commentary while building!

Use a pencil eraser over the copper tracers and perhaps the tuning capacitor. It very gently sands the traces and leave them like new.

This is cool. Thanks for showing it.

Sexy Russian made ferrite antenna! Good idea to clean the PC board with brake cleaner! Could use some 2000 grit sandpaper with it as well. Don't use steel wool! Came for a vintage Russian AM radio build and got a good lesson in Russian to boot.Nice TRF kit.

I watched you for many years. I think this is art

M is for Mega. 100k resistor would be marked as M10

Looks like a nice quality kit. I used to have a novelty radio that had a vacuum tube look to it. Had 3 plastic "tubes" on top lit by LED bulbs. It operated basically the same way, the strongest AM station was present across the dial. It also had FM.

What a blast! Most excellent.

Вот это у Вас эфир на СВ насыщен! Класс! и приемник отличный получился)

I have the best experiences removing the oxide using Scotch Brite.

That was beautiful

Like you, I cannot justify another AM transistor radio. Not that I am a collector, but I have received them from both my sisters estates, and when I sold off mom's house after she entered the nursing home, her small collection of radios came my away, so I guess you could say I have met my goal of collecting radios, even though I never had a lot of interest in collecting them. I have also built several kit radios, some am, a lot FM (strange for me since we JUST got our first FM station here in a town so far from everywhere that FM signals must strain to get into town and surely cannot penetrate the walls of our home, all well insulated including a aluminum paper vapor barrier between the siding and insulation, this makes our homes resemble a Faraday cage, the new steel roofs that we have all gone to now that the large hail has become a sort of annual visitor (DO NOT SAY CLIMATE CHANGE!) as the steel is much easier to replace then shingles, that seals our homes off nearly completely for all but our local AM station, which can penetrate in specific parts of our home. The local FM strains at it's best to penetrate my home, a few of my sets can tune it in, the best for now is my Grundig Traveler clock/radio that I purchased years ago for our traveling in our motor home. The little set served us well as we explored the deserts of Arizona, one of the very best times of my late wife and my married life. I shall always remember the joy in my late wife's eyes as we gazed into the grand canyon, and Bryce Canyon, the rest of the desert, which we both loved was a welcome sight all while we were down there hiding from the snows of the Great Plaines.

It's better than your typical crystal radio with either a galena crystal or an 1N34 diode! I enjoyed watching you put the radio together!

45:18 Yeah, that sums my bad decisions up perfectly.

I like seeing the soviet stuff, thanks for sharing.

Best sounding radio I've heard on your channel. You just have to learn to like listening to 2 or 3 stations at the same time.

Excellent most enjoyable thanks .

In fact I prefer the soviet system more than the color codes. The colors often fade out with age, dirt and heat (eg. brown, red, orange are hard to tell apart), while the written value is far easier to read. No color codes, just plain text. Nowadays only high power resistors (5+W) and SMD ones use such wirtten values. And just like modern resistors use R22 for 0.22 ohms, the soviets use K47 for 0.47 kiloohms. Color codes were invented for simplicity in production, which the soviets didn't really care about or they used different machines for production.

Works well considering the design and the proximity to KNX.

It sounds and looks realy good.

I always use a powdered cleanser (like Vim, Ajax, or Chlorox) for cleaning PCB traces. Steel wool seems to react with the metals on the board & create alloys/oxides that are difficult to solder through. Just rinse the PCB thoroughly after to remove any traces of chlorine & other chemicals.

ОСТ is industry standart number. Production date (дата изготовления) is 2 - 91. Such kits was well known for not best quality components but kits from 90s are mostly useless junk sold as kids toy. It could have not full set of components and contain defective ones. So to make such thing work the kid should know how to diagnose and where to get replacements for missing and bad parts☻

Lots of moisture damage but still a fun kit

until the end of the 1980s, the A332 battery was an army standard size for dosimeters, testers and other equipment. This size never became popular in the 1990s.

Soviets "enjoyed" capacitor plague from about 70s till the end. Some people just recap the whole thing before plugging in, without testing, just off it goes. This is why the seller added new ones.

A wonderful job comrade!

I built a radio the other day. I made it out of a clear case that a toy watch came in, two 10 watt speakers from a broken flatscreen TV, a power bank as a battery, a switch I had lying around, wire, and for the radio guts I used a radio board from ICStation that has a two built-in 3 watt amplifiers. I used an antenna from my old portable TV since it uses a standard F connector. Sounds awesome. I positioned the power bank so you can charge it and also charge a phone. The radio board taps directly to the batteries inside the power bank.

Those resistors have some amazing accuracy :-)

Design reminds me of Sony's SPORTS series of radios and Walkmans.

Sounds like a radio we had to put together in an electronics class I took back in 10th grade (circa 1975), only my instructions were in English.

That is a nice little kit radio, and it's Colour reminds me of a Phillips radio I had years ago a similar Canary Yellow , but i think it was more of a Burnt yellow as I would call it. I looked it up and found the model and it was a Philips RL047. I did have it around 1976 or 77.

Большое спасибо. У меня был такой.

In New Zealand in the 70s to the mid 2000s we had a electronics store called Dick Smith. They had a series of kits called Fun Way into electronics, which either came in a mega pack or separately. This radio is similar to a Dick Smith transistor radio kitset I got one Christmas in the early 90s.

I love that antenna

Being wide open like that with very little selectivity, you do get the full audio bandwidth the radio station is transmitting. It shows that the main reason that people say am radio sounds dull is from narrow bandwidth receivers.

Great choice! WIll be good to see what this can do with regeneration added by means of a tickler winding in the V2 Collector circuit!

That's better soldering than I've seen other people do and they had clean boards and wires.

Interesting project well done.

Now that is a bar antenna if it were connected to a i.f. set might be interesting. Thanks love the build.

Bought one of these today on eBay. I don't know what shape it's all in, but hopefully with Shango's taking one for the team I'll have a KIEV4 working before long.

Adding RA flux #835 by MG Chemicals to your solder Joints will help . The Use of Lacquer thinner will clean the Flux and not harm the components.

I reckon that an enterprising person could make a bit of money by buying a bunch of these kits, and repackaging them with translated instructions and a new bag of parts...interesting stuff. Thanks again for the videos :)

irresistible

Very nice

Proves how valuable a superhet circuit would be for selectivity. Almost a Russian version of Tandy kits of the 1970s. Kind of reminds of the first Heathkit digital alarm clock I built in High School late 70s and used it in speech class to demonstrate how to set it. Wow ancient.

The point of color code scheme for resistors is there were different types of them. Some with color codes and some with paint writings. I think in your case they were with writings, but paint faded completely. Had some kit in my childhood, it had both types of resistors there. And now i remembered, that it was a good thing to do to position components with writings that way, they are easily readable and you dont have to rotate the board to read them all

Super 😊

I have a TRF radio from 1933, mine uses tubes is bulkier and plugs into the wall but the performance is almost identical. Reasonable sensitivity, but has bad selectivity and breaks into oscillation depending on the settings of the tuner, volume control and length of antenna wire connected.These are fun to fool around with but you wouldn't want it to be your daily driver. Kind of like a dune buggy compared to the family car.

Как будто в детство вернулся.

I have a friend who's from the old Soviet Union and he used to work in the electronics industry there and he says a lot of equipment and items were stored outside in containers so they were subject to a lot of moisture and of course chipboard holds the moisture and just promotes corrosion and rust and so forth. at one time the number one cause of house fires in the old Soviet Union were television sets because they were stored outside in wooden crates inside make shift containers.

It's a Beautiful Homodyne (DCR) receiver kit.

Where I'm at, 1500 KSTP (ESPN sports) would be all I'd hear in the background. You can pick them up on just about any piece of metal. I'm so close they would probably wipe out the entire band, that was often the case for me when I would build simple crystal sets as a kid. Back at that time KSTP was still "The Talk Station" and had various local shows like Garage Logic with Joe Soucheray (still continues today as a podcast, going on 28 years now), and T.D. Mischke, as well as national shows like Coast to Coast and Rush Limbaugh. I cannot stand nationally syndicated sports talk. I would've enjoyed building that radio as a kid. I had a good friend whose dad could read and speak Russian to some extent who likely would've been happy to help out as he too was into electronics and restoring instruments like keyboards and organs.

Those Silver Markings On That Board Make Putting That Radio Together Really Easy.

I was screaming at my screen like an idiot when you were trying to figure out which transistor was which, "It says right there in the instructions which is which!"

I learned this in HS Electronics many many years ago. The Letter takes the place of the Decimal point, as Decimal points can be erased or easily missed , it was a very clever way to Note each Components value on the Component.. ., America should do the same.

I have these numbered resistors, there's even green colored ones that are bit longer. Red ceramic caps are easy to break corners off and the legs can break very easily on orange transistor. Speaker has corrosion or dust in the coil well._

holy cow! I just made one of these, mine was a white case.

NASA spent much money with the Fisher pen company to produce a ball point pen that would operate in zero G, at all angles and in low ambient atmospheric pressure, for our Astronauts, the result was the Space Pen, versions of it are still are sold today. The USSR provided the Cosmonauts wood pencils. Very different engineering processes, very different modalities, very same outcome!

" the seller said the electrolytics were either bad or missing" . Project farm : "were going to test that" good god youtube is rotting my brain :(

A bit of regeneration added to the RF amplifier would improve selectivity.

"7229" was probably the number of the kit, presumably, many different kits were in this series, and the number was used to differentiate between them.

52:31 This battery was called "Элемент А 336", it has 1,5 Volts.

Reminds me of the Radio Shack " P-BOX " kits i made as a boy.

Nice to hear one of these fairly rare T.R.F. Sets working. It's a shame that the Paper Dielectric Tuning Capacitor suffered in storage. It would be interesting to compare the receiver performance of this Radio with a ZN414 or equivalent type Radio (also T.R.F.).

I am going to order a couple of those kits; one to build, the other just to have (loose) one of those lovely loopsticks. Those look like the they could manage use in a decent output transmitter... ;-)

Very unusual to see that colour-code table in a Soviet brochure from 1980. I came to the trade in mid-1980s, and haven't ever seen any colour-coded R's until around 1990. It was good old alphanumeric lettering then.

Theyv'e added color codes, because the components there are usually what was left over, so some batches use lettered ones, some the color coded ones. So they made the manual to cover all variants. And regarding the electrolytics: I would definitely not use those soviet aluminum ones. If you look more carefully on them, they have no pressure relief whatsoever (solid can, with pretty hefty poured epoxy resin plug). So once some starts to outgass, you are in for pretty energetic boom... Regarding the marking: In the eastern bloc it was common to use the multiplier code letter in place of a decimal point and omit the units symbol. So 4k7 on a resistor is 4.7kOhm, M2 is 0.2 MOhm. On capacitors are often used "pF" as the base units that are not written, so 4k7 on a capacitor is then 4.7x1000pF so 4.7nF, M2 would be 0.2x1000000 pF so 200nF and so on. When no multiplier is needed but a decimal point needs, a letter E, R or J is used instead. So 4R7 on a resistor means 4.7Ohm, 4R7 on a capacitor means 4.7pF, j33 on a resistor means 0.33Ohm. When just a number of max 3 digit is used, it means the "base units" (for the marking system, do not confuse with base physical units), so Ohms for resistors and pF for capacitors, so 33 on a capacitor means 33pF, 220 on a capacitor means 220pF and so on. This does create confusion with the western (or asian?) numbers-only code (first two digits plus a multiplier exponent)...

Would be interesting to try a passive loop antenna with this radio. They increase selectivity. Loosely couple the two tank circuits by positioning the tuned loop antenna a few inches from the radio

I recall seeing a portable CRT tv kit on aliexpress I think that would make an interesting video but damn I love soviet stuff

superhet would have been a knockout what with the solid design very very robust overall look and feel

И особенный привет всем остальным. I watched till the end since I was convinced that that thing was only gonna pick up UVB-76 😏 [end sarc] ..it needs a RF fine tuner of sorts ..and maybe this thing took those size N batteries since those were very popular in the 70s/80s .. very strange build and even stranger since Russia doesn't have AM stations ..these must've been for export only

It would be interesting to see this radio on a range test as well.

Very cool to see this Russian radio made & as always I very much enjoy your videos....stay safe

I love the Soviet-era engineering philosphy, I would import a Lada car if I could! I'd love to see you try this one out in the desert where KNX won't be as overpowering.

"Start" was a... brand i guess, of kits like this in SU. Four digit number is their catalog model designation. They ranger from basic direct amplifier radios to hi-fi amps and Mindstorm-like MCU kits.

I would have rubbed some paste flux onto the board after cleaning it.