This is how old RC often worked, contrary to what many critics and the average scientific person thought these were not controlled by little people but used radio waves. if you want basic information about this you can look into Nikola Tesla's designs since that are the most barebone versions of RC machinery.
That said:
It is quite easy to make a circuit that you can control using radio waves these days
You only need to have a charge activated switch such as a mosfet, which do not need a as high wattage but only a static voltage.
while flow-based like a normal transistor can work, those need a strong signal to work to full extend.
So what you need:
- a tuned receiver coil: you can look to old radio coils, or in the old patents and designs from N. tesla
- A (power) MOSFET to switch your circuit.
- A power source to power your circuit.
- A low voltage drop switching diode is helpful, and might be necessary at higher frequency(like those very cheap and small ones for low power)
Building the device
while there are many ways to do this,
connect one of the outputs of your tuned coil(connected to the antenna) through the diode to your MOSFET gate(trigger), connect a high resistance resistor from the same output of the coil to the ground and connect the gate of the MOSFET also to the power source ground with a high resistor. now connect your circuit to the mosfet and it works.
Extra info:
If you do not have too much radio pollution in your area than the tuner circuit is probably not necessary. so in that case:
You can just connect the antenna to the gate of the MOSFET(with the diode and resistors can be helpful still)
however in most areas, you'll find extreme amounts of radio pollution, so adding something to tune it either like a radio or using some of the other methods is probably recommended. (or you can test it in a metal container).
Explanation a radio signal generates a small amount of power in a coil or antenna, just like your finger can trigger an average mosfet or light a led bulb connected to the ground when you are near mains electric cables in your house(lamp cables). your antenna would send of some static voltage which is enough to trigger a mosfet, but there are other ways, especially when using surface wave radio transmitting, while at a really low frequency, it can transmit large amounts of power over high distances. so you could just make a coil or ring and use the lightning sparks between the terminals to for example trigger a plasma bridge in a vacuum or to directly drive your cirquit after stepping down the voltage with 2 simple coils(since it is ac it is simple)