I have been a radio & electronics tinkerer ever since a primary school teacher let us boys loose on a box of old junk one afternoon in nineteen-hundred and black & white. (The girls were left to their own devices. How non-PC).
I started off with clumsy, hand-held piles of HP2 batteries ('D' cells) and the DC motors I found inside toys.* At about the same time, radio exerted its magic pull. A schoolfriend brought me the battered remnants of a MW (AM band) pocket radio he found in the street. He sniggered when I tried to get it going...Then my Father bought a kit MW portable from Tandy (Radio Shack), which he built & aligned in the garage, with no heatsink tweezers on the transistors, or test equipment at all. Amazingly, it worked. The schoolfriend mentioned earlier popped round & saw 'us' in action, surrounded by the parts for a real radio. He didn't snigger.
Then came a two-transistor radio kit, also from Tandy. This was really a crystal set followed by 2 stages of audio amplification. Most importantly, it was built on an open board, with spring terminals to hold onto the component leads and wires. So I could experiment! I found that sliding the ferrite rod partly out of the tuning coil brought in foreign stations, and that just one reception report to Radio Prague guaranteed a regular supply of "Czechoslovak Life", until the Wall came tumbling down.
I started collecting radios & 'junk', and I've never really stopped. The DXTV bug bit, so I bought a VHF-UHF upconverter to bring in the Continentals in Spring & Summer. The 'aerial' was a vague attempt at a half-wave dipole, but made of hookup wire, and hung up in my room. It brought in Germany, Spain, Russia and Hungary. I'm easily pleased.
An old Regentone valve (tube) radiogram cost 50p from a charity shop. It worked well on short wave with just a few metres of wire dangling down to the garden fence. The old ones can often out-perform the new ones, in terms of reception and sound quality.
I also remember a Realistic or Science Fair 'Globe Patrol' MW & SW kit-built regenerative radio which a friend gave me, fully working, for either nothing or comparatively little. The radio had a case with plastic top, bottom and sides, a kind of compressed cardboard back, and a metal front! This acted as one plate of a giant capacitor, with me as the other half. Tuning consisted of finely juggling the tuning controls and reaction knob, then stepping back a few feet. I recall All India Radio, CB pirates on AM and the Russian Woodpecker on this funbox.
So finally came the Matsui MR-4099, in exchange for a pair of shoes. Its owner was convinced it had died, as only the clock and light would work. I took out all the cells and left it alone for a good long while. This is always a good idea, if your '803A or equivalent refuses to play ball. Don't forget to check the Key Lock switch too...
I hope you enjoy this section of the site. More soon!
Disclaimer:-This site is offered for evaluation as a source of ideas for experimentation. You carry out any such work at your own risk. Neither the site author or host will be held responsible for any loss or injury arising directly or indirectly from such work.
*[About DC motors...I've noticed that if you hold tightly to the shaft of a small one, then connect it to a small battery and slowly rotate the shaft, you can get it to produce a hum or buzz. (Warning:- only do this for a few seconds, or the motor will overheat!) I'm not sure if this is solely due to arcing between the brushes and commutator sections, or something else. More on this kind of thing (and much else besides) in the Science Hobbyist Forum at www.amasci.com Why should this be interesting? If the motor is fed with DC from a battery, which is about the smoothest DC there is, where does the hum or buzz come from?]
©2005 John Marsh