Some mods to improve RX sensitivity

George UR4CRG/RX3ARG  suggests some mods to improve RX sensitivity:

  1. Add a parallel capacitor to R12.  Try C=470 pF.  George found in his signal analyser that this gave a 3 dB rise in gain at 30 MHz.  He placed an 0805 SMD (or your could use a 1208 SMD part) over R12.
  2. Add two 100 Ohm resistors to  the collectors of Q11 and Q12.  You will need to cut the PCB tracks to add in the resistors.   The emitter-followers do not like HF signals and a small collector resistor gives light feed back

After these modifications, reception was noticeably more sensitive/

Reference