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Bought a crystal radio

John Connor

John Connor

Lifer
Once upon a time, as a young lad greatly interested in the world of wireless communication, I had a crystal radio and a police scanner kit from Radio Shack. It was quite fascinating to hear air traffic control and stations all over the world.

Flash forward over 20 years and I've always wanted a crystal radio again. Mostly for a doomsday scenario. Seen as how crystal radios don't use electronics that can be damaged by an EMP and they don't require power. So I ran across a Rocket crystal radio for 20 bucks complete with original box and instructions and seeing how all the other Rocket's were going for big bucks I scarfed it up.

Here's what it looks like: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...radio.TRS0&_nkw=rocket+crystal+radio&_sacat=0


Anyone use or have a crystal radio?
 
John Connor said:
Once upon a time, as a young lad greatly interested in the world of wireless communication, I had a crystal radio and a police scanner kit from Radio Shack. It was quite fascinating to hear air traffic control and stations all over the world.

Flash forward over 20 years and I've always wanted a crystal radio again. Mostly for a doomsday scenario. Seen as how crystal radios don't use electronics that can be damaged by an EMP and they don't require power. So I ran across a Rocket crystal radio for 20 bucks complete with original box and instructions and seeing how all the other Rocket's were going for big bucks I scarfed it up.

Here's what it looks like: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...radio.TRS0&_nkw=rocket+crystal+radio&_sacat=0


Anyone use or have a crystal radio?
Click to expand...

Yep, had one. Listened to "The Shadow" underneath the bed sheets with a flashlight.

Wonder if the new ones work any better. Zero energy usage though.
 
As a cub scout , I built a "fox hole radio" for a merit badge , it had a block of galena crystal with a little whisker arm you had to hunt around with to get a station in.
We didn't have those new-fangled Deeodes to play with like you young-uns do nowdays 🙂
 
Pick2 said:
As a cub scout , I built a "fox hole radio" for a merit badge , it had a block of galena crystal with a little whisker arm you had to hunt around with to get a station in.
We didn't have those new-fangled Deeodes to play with like you young-uns do nowdays 🙂
Click to expand...

I don't think mine was Cub Scout related, but definitely a whisker arm model. Had to poke around on that crystal forever to get anything. I'm sure that mine had to be one of the cheapest models ever made.
 
I was bored a while back and decided to see if I can build a super simple crystal radio, like it was just a couple wires, a diode and maybe some resistors and think a transistor, I forget. The tuning capacitor was just two sheets of foil and a piece of paper. I actually picked up a local FM station, thought that was pretty cool given how simple it was.

I used to have one of those electronics science fair kits as a kid and built one with that, used to pick up the local AM country station which we no longer have.

When messing with stuff like that there's a cool feeling when you start hearing scratchy music coming out of the little speaker. 😛
 
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