3 Volt FM Transmitter

Skema Rangkaian 3V FM Transmitter

This 3V FM transmitter is about the simplest and most basic transmitter to build and have a useful transmitting range. It is surprisingly powerful despite its small component count and 3V operating voltage. It will easily penetrate over three floors of an apartment building and go over 300 meters in the open air.

The circuit is basically a radio frequency (RF) oscillator that operates around 100 MHz. Audio picked up andamplified by the
electret microphone is fed into the audio amplifier stage built around the first transistor. Output from the collector is fed into the base of the second transistor where it modulates the resonant frequency of the tank circuit (the 5 turn coil and the trimcap) by varying the junction capacitance of the transistor. Junction capacitance is a function of the potential difference applied to the base of the transistor. The tank circuit is connected in a Colpitts

Place the transmitter about 10 feet from a FM radio. Set the radio to somewhere about 89 - 90 MHz. Walk back tothe FM transmitter and turn it on. Spread the winding of the coil apart by approximately 1mm from each other. No coilwinding should be touching another winding. Use a small screw driver to tune the trim cap. Remove the screwdriverfrom the trim screw after every adjustment so the LC circuit is not affected by stray capicitance. Or use a plasticscrewdriver. If you have difficulty finding the transmitting frequency then have a second person tune up and downthe FM dial after every adjustment. One full turn of the trim cap will cover its full range of capacitance from 6pF to 45pF. The normal FM band tunes in over about one tenth of the full range of the tuning cap.

So it is best to adjust it in steps of 5 to 10 degrees at each turn. So tuning takes a little patience but is not difficult. The reason that there must be at least 10 ft. separation between the radio and the FM transmitter is that the FM transmitter emits harmonics; it does not only emit on one frequency but on several different frequencies close to each other. You should have little difficulty in finding the Tx frequency when you follow this procedure.