Any of you remember listening to these as a kid?

[George-CT]

I sure do. They kinda got me started in electronics as I wanted more volume so I built my first 1 tube radio hooked up to a 6 volt dry cell, those old tall round ones.

I see them now only they are done with a 1n34 diode rather than the cats-wisker..

George

 

[Ron J]

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[George-CT]

That one is pretty much just local AM stations. I have a lot of the old morse code clackers for the railroad I collect and morse code keys. I really enjoyed morse code on ham radio. Made a lot of great contacts and still maintain my call letters of WA1NLA and still active but not like I was. Wireless really was a fun way to talk with others. I did it on 15 meters and 20 meters for long distance and 160 meters and 80 meters for east coast stuff and 40 meters for the mid west. I'm 65 Ron. Not a lot of hobbies I didn't try over the years. I liked the building in electronics then as it was all hard wired and transistors, ic's and the like were unknown. Just hard wired, capacitors, resistors, torids and tube sockets. I remember bring home a lot of old radios and TV sets to cannibalize them for parts. Still have coffee cans of the stuff around here. Do you remember making the old crystal sets on a toilet paper roll wrapping it with copper wire you pulled from an old transformer, covered it in lacquer, then wired it to the cats Wisker and ear phones?

Geo

 

[ojm bc]

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[Micheal_R]

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[Uncle Willy]

Yeah I made the old crystal sets and thought I was crapping in tall cotton.

Bill

 

[Rob/Windsor Ont.]

and I would trod off bright and early to an old T.V graveyard behind a repair shop. We'd come back with bags full of capacitors and resistors, tube sockets.........you name it ! I recall one particular evening when Ralph and I decided to wire a small amplifier to a speaker on a tube radio that we had in our basement. We were curious. My parents were upstairs getting ready for a wedding. Well.....we turn that sucker on and the lights all over the house are blinking off and on. My dad yells out.......what the he!! are you two doing down there ? My buddy's laying on the floor laughing his butt off cause everytime I try to turn the sucker off, I'm getting zapped......just like we used to when you were standing on a cement floor and touched an iron that wasn't grounded properly. In my haste to turn it off, it took me a few times to remember to just UNPLUG it ! About ten yrs. back, I built a crystal radio for my youngest daughter's science project in gradeschool. I had told her about the ones I used to build when I was a kid. She wanted to emulate that. She still has it tucked away for nostalgic sake. Those were the best of times George.

 

[George-CT]

I built quite a lot later as the new stuff took hold with ic's and tubes went out. I enjoyed making my own circuit boards. The last thing i built as a SSTV or Slow Scan TV for ham radio. Had it wired to a P-7 CRT tube, which is and old rador tube from the military and the phosphorous would glow green long enough to hold the picture for 7 seconds, which is how long it took to scan a complete screen then. That was fun for a few years but then as the computers caught on in ham radio, they wrote software to do a far better job... All kinds of free software out there now for SSTV. Computers and ham radio were made for each other. The first software program I wrote in basic was for morse code, so it would copy it off line. It worked fine as long as the sender had a perfect fist and send it like machine code... He his fist was slow or to fast, the program did know what he was sending. Still it was fun making it work. Morse code or CW which stands for continuous wave was great for ham radio. On 500 miliwatts you could talk around the world. We used to build code rigs and go back packing on the Appalachian trail and transmit off the tops of the white mountains till the batteries went dead... I wish I had saved some of those also. I built one out of a Tuna can. I liked it the best and made some great contacts one weekend off of Mt Washington into then Yugoslavia on 15 meter CW.

George

 

[Rob/Windsor Ont.]

I consider myself fortunate to have caught the last decade or so of it. What a thrill that had to be communicating across the ocean with a homemade unit !! Geez George....as early as the fourth grade, which is when Ralph and I became buds, we had our noses into everything that had to do with electronics and science. Our walkie-talkies were always hooked up to an antenna wire that strung from our neighbors tree to the corner of our house. We'd spend hours listening in on whatever and whoever was using that frequency. In the fifth grade we started making our own gunpowder out of charcoal, sulphur and saltpeter. We spent countless hours designing (or tried to anyways) rockets that never got off the ground. We'd use the thin coil wire from an old speaker as an ignition source. Simply hooked it up to an old car battery with a throw switch. It'd glow red and ignite the powder. Many an anthill saw their last days out in the fields where we used to play. Little bombs made from copper tubing. It's a wonder we didn't kill ourselves, in all honesty. I'll never forget the day that a weather balloon landed in our backyard on the same date that an early Apollo mission returned to earth. I watched this thing come down for a good five minutes and was convinced that it was a piece of the Apollo rocket.

 

[Kelley (Texas)]

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[Royal]

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[Kelley (Texas)]

I just looked through some boxes because I saw it recently. I remember stretching a copper wire for the antenna and how you had to have patience moving the pointed wire around the top of that crystal until you located a radio station.

I must have been around eight or nine when I received this radio kit as a Christmas gift. At this time in my life, I was already getting involved with horses and I kinda think that my folks were trying to get me interested in something beside horses. My folks were tired of hearing about horses, and having a borrowed horse in the back yard or barn on occasion...especially since the one that I borrowed from Jerry got into the garden one Sunday morning. While I enjoyed messing with this crystal radio, horses remained my main interest in life. Please have a great day! Kelley (Texas)

 

[Rob/Windsor Ont.]

I kick my fanny for that one. Not that it ever would've amounted to anything but I sure would like to have it in my possession now. That story made our local radio news that day. I felt like a celebrity. Incidentally, it originated from the U.S. As to what part, I simply can't recall. It'd sure be nice to have as a history keepsake though.

 

[Royal]

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[Rob/Windsor Ont.]

Funny how that works ! I'll put one together shortly.....maybe this afternoon. It's raining here anyways.

 

[Rob/Windsor Ont.]

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[Royal]

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[Rob/Windsor Ont.]

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[George-CT]

I was very active in that via ham radio back then and have a lot of Certificates here I won from the NASA Ham Radio club there. I'll explain more as I post them tomorrow.

Geo

 

[George-CT]

I live on a hill and often out in the woods I'll find those big aluminum party balloons on the ground here when walking around the woods. Not sure why so many up here on the hill other than maybe how the breezes normally run thru here. I found one in the Florida Keys one time at my buddies.

The Coast Guard there has these balloons that look like decent size blimps and its tethered to a cable and winch set up. They send them up and have cameras on them and whatever else, an they monitor the boat and air traffic for drugs. Anyhow one day we were wandering around NONAME Key, that is the name of the Key and found one on the ground. All the gear was off it but the balloon was there. They said lighting had hit it or the cable and it leaked and came to the ground.

Go to this link and you can see how big this balloon was..

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/airdef/tars.htm

Geo