Wayne.B wrote in
:
On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:33:37 +0000, Larry wrote:
What I made was a 3-transistor TRF AM radio with a regenerative
detector in a tiny plastic box my mother threw away. High impedance
crystal earphones in ham magazines were a dollar and I had those for
crystal radio projects. The new receiver had a loopstick antenna and
with 2 RF stages it was very sensitive, though not very selective.
I wore it to school just as the World Series started so I could hear
the ball game during the boring classes in our elementary school. I
got caught, of course, but when the principal found out I had built
the radio out of these new transistors, he was so fascinated listening
to the ball game on it I wasn't punished. As it was the only
transistor radio in our town, I ended up in the newspaper showing it
off.
You know you're "old" when your new stuff is now a museum!....dammit.
http://www.ck722museum.com/
Good stuff. Some time around 1956 I got my hands on a 2N107 which
cost 98 cents and had specs similar to the CK722. I took a crystal
set that I had built previously, bread boarded onto a short pice of 2
x 4 lumber, and added a 1 transistor audio amplifier. It made a huge
difference in the audio level of the ear phones. A friend of mine
asked to borrow it once and I found out later that he had entered it
in the local science fair and won first prize with it.
"Science Fair" to me always meant hauling the home brew ham radio
station down to the school gym and hauling a sloper dipole from the
front door of the school to the top of the flagpole on the same clip as
Old Glory. One year, I surprised them all by NOT bringing my station.
That year I built a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell from plans that came from
Mr Wizard, Don Herbert, who worked for GE that made the TV show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_Mr._Wizard
My father had the second TV in town, a Raytheon 9" that looked like an
old oscilloscope. The whole neighborhood used to crowd around it before
they got their own sets. I installed LOTS of TV antennas besides his.
When Mr Wizard was on....the TV was MINE.