OK, I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I must have been delirious. The battery voltage went low and that's why I didn't have noise. I got plenty of drive when I changed the batteries. I need about a 100K pot somewhere for this thing to work right. If I back down the gain I loose info. I probably should have buffered the LO. Hard to make AGC stick with battery power dropping. Guess I would need to regulate it. So the 386 is probably OK but needs better acoustic box.