[Tor3]

FM radios aren't complicated at all. And FM transmitters, in particular, are extremely simple. When I was a student we had a tiny one we made in an afternoon (this was decades ago), we connected it to our 8-hour reel tape deck and had our own music station in the car radio when we drove around in the area. The advantage of AM is, as was mentioned already, the lower frequency used by AM which means much better coverage. FM 87MHz-108MHz is almost just line of sight.

[kmbfjr]

No much to a coil, antenna and a germanium diode.

[candiddevmike]

The geranium diode is doing most of the heavy lifting. Good luck building that from scratch.

[fmj]

https://rimstar.org/science_electronics_projects/razor_blade...

[bsder]

Galena cat whiskers were quite common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector

[Tor3]

And how is that relevant to the alleged complexity of building an AM radio vs an FM one? The point was that the latter is easy, not complicated. The FM transmitter is so easy to make that you can make one by accident - if there's a non-linear element in the rf part.

[nahumba]

Its about the simplicity of the circuit. The components are available for any electronic Technician.

Use an amplifier is not a basic circuit. Resistor diode capacitor cable and power source are the basic of electronics