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« on: July 31, 2013, 0632 UTC »
About 1965 I found a Crosley (11 GLORIOUS vacuum tubes) (upright? floor model?) shortwave radio, but since the cabinet was in bad shape my father would not let me bring it in the house. I pulled the electronics out and ran a wire out the window upstairs. It WORKED! The downside was I only had enough wire to run about 1/2 way down the stairs. So, I set the radio on one step and I set on the step below. The cone was rotted away on the speaker and I never realized speakers had cones. To listen, I pressed my ear against the center of the speaker. I pulled a radio out of a junker car (vacuum tube - had a vibrator power supply that would stand your hair straight out from your head) and discovered speakers had cones! Progress!
(Cars had a 6 volt battery and radios took about a minute to "warm up." Remember that?)
I investigated connecting the speaker to the radio. What I didn't know was that, back then, the magnet on the speaker was a huge electromagnet that they used to filter the B+. Yep, about 600 volts. That was 47 years ago and I still remember what that felt like. The speaker made a loud noise - once. Off to find / steal another speaker.
Man, that was cool.
Eventually I discovered Popular Electronics magazine with the shortwave schedules and would set up half of the night trying to listen to Radio Cook Islands on 5.050 @ 1000 watts. I couldn't have heard it if it was in the next state, but I didn't know that.)
Somehow I got the idea to use the car radio power supply (it was like 400 Hz ??) attached to rods in the ground - this would drive earthworms out of the wet ground. Some guy in the neighborhood saw this and gave me a "telephone ringer." I learned later this "telephone ringer" was a HUGE magneto. I have no idea what the voltage this thing was, but it was all a 10 or 11 year old boy could do to crank it.
Another kid I knew took apart an electric shaver (AC) and hung up about a mile of wire. To the end he attached what we now know to be a spark-gap. He grounded the other side and if there was a thunderstorm anywhere in the area we would be treated to 2 or 3 inch sparks. (and a lot of UV). Did you know you could actually get a sunburn from that? It's amazing we didn't fry our retinas.
Not to be outdone, I reversed the process and connected the really large magneto to this spark-gap, then to wire in a tree. Back then, television sets were B&W with channels 2-13. I was trying to contact the astronauts or something but discovered I could completely wipe out television sets within (at least) a mile radius.
My uncle gave me a table-model Philco-Ford shortwave radio with pushbuttons and a real speaker. Then a Hallicrafters S-38. Morse Code. Amateur Radio. Teletype. I built one of the first computers in Ohio from discrete components. (8008 processor - 1 week's pay for the processor).
Nothing I've done (technically) beat that old Crosley and the smell of hot tubes at 0230, trying to find Radio Cook Islands in 5.050
I really pity kids with their X-boxes and satellite TV. They have no idea what they've missed.
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