Hazmat, You hit the nail on the head with your observation. My response to more complexity than I can comfortably span with my mind was to break the problem down into chunks of functionality that I could grasp one at a time. Same way engineering in electronics, you don't design the whole enchilada all at once, you engineer the front end, the RF stages the IF stages, the detector, the audio ckts, and the power supply as separate blocks of functionality with well defined interfaces to connect them and when it connects together it is a radio reciever. I hope when the pieces are put together it is the house we want and not another instance of a race horse designed by a committee (AKA a camel).
Pat