As true as everything your say is, I still don't want to make something with a bunch of ICs that I don't have. I just want a really simple receiver that can be tuned to a specific frequency and I can hear someone on the transmitter. If it drifts a little that is fine, (unless it drifts my like 1.5MHz) If the voices sound fuzzy, that's also fine as long as I would be able to hear what they are saying.
From what I can tell, what I need to make a receiver is an oscillator, a mixer, and some way of tuning it, is that right?