Crystal Radio On for Ten Years
When I was a young lad of 5, I had a crystal radio set that my father had connected to an outdoor dipole antenna. He also connected our old Westinghouse console radio to the same antenna. We lived far from the city, so it was difficult to pick up stations. One day while I was listening to my crystal set, I happened to reach over and twiddled the tuning knob on the big radio. This strangely caused an improvement in my crystal radio's reception. The big radio was turned off, so I wondered why this had an affect on my radio’s reception.
It turns out the Westinghouse radio had a tuned directional loop antenna inside its large cabinet. The above crystal radio is not connected to an external dipole. It just uses a similar but much larger tuned AM loop antenna.
I made this crystal radio out of parts I had as a kid. I applied my woodworking skills including wood turning and routing an OG edge on the base. Then it was a simple matter of applying some calculations and… I did manage to get the tuning capacitor’s dial to point to the right frequency. I connected up the radio over ten years ago and … it has been playing 700 WLW ever since. It Will Happen Today we can still listen to radio with a combination of 4 simple parts including a coil, a capacitor, a germanium diode, and a length of wire, all put together and coupled with a sensitive earphone. However, our codependence on often proprietary digital technology will inevitably render this simplistic methodology useless. The telephone, television, paper money, brick & mortar stores, and soon radio – all digital. The only reason we don’t have digital radio in the US is because of the highly proprietary and costly HD Radio broadcast standard. But soon … my crystal radio will become another antique that will be added to my vintage electronic oddity museum. Steve - April 1st, 2023
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