(No story)December 1964: V21 #6. Six of the stories in 1955 were not given titles bythe author or the magazine, so the titles shown here are my fabrications,based on what the stories were about.Above is something I've wanted to post for a long time:A complete index of all known Carl & Jerry adventures by John T.
- 1954 Boy First Book Of Radio Electronics Morgan Pdf Viewer Free
- 1954 Boy First Book Of Radio Electronics Morgan Pdf Viewer Online
Frye.There are 119 in all. In the left half of the index are the title, issuedate, and volume number. In the right half are two-line capsule summariesof each episode, so that you can more easily spot your favorite episodes,which most people recall by 'what happened' rather than by titleor issue.The color coding is significant. As I explain below, I'min the process of republishing the full run of Carl and Jerry as fiveanthologies, and each anthology in the series is color-coded to the index.The cover of the first book is blue.
1954 Boy First Book Of Radio Electronics Morgan Pdf Viewer Free
The cover of the second book is mauve.The cover of the third book is yellow, and so on. The color of any givenstory's title in the index tells you which volume the story is in.I will be releasing a number of the stories as standalonePDF documents, which may be downloaded without charge and freely distributed.The title to these stories will be in bold, and the link to those storieswill be the issue date.
If the issue date is underlined, that means there'sa downloadable PDF behind it. Keep in mind that these PDF files are typically2 MB in size, so plan your download time accordingly.
A new one will beposted every few weeks, as time allows, so do check back regularly!As well-known as he was among those who grew up reading his articles,little has ever been written about John T. Frye himself.
Setting thisright has taken more time and more work than I had expected, and I wantto thank several people for digging around and locating what data thereis, especially Michael Holley and Bob Ballantine W8SU.US Census records tell us that John Frye was born in Poinsett County,Arkansas on March 14, 1910. He was the second son of Orton P. And Essie Frye. Hisolder brother Parker was born in 1905. Orton Frye was listed as ownerof a sawmill in 1910, and in 1920 owned a machine shop in West Prairie,Arkansas, with his son Parker working there with him.
The 1930 censusshows the Frye family as moved to Logansport, Indiana, and living at., the house where John lived, as best we know, for the restof his life. (The 1940 census records are still sealed, and will not bereleased until 2012.) Orton P.
Frye is not shown in the Social SecurityDeath Index, and it may be that he died before the Social Security systemwas put in place in the late 1930s. Essie lived to be 91, and died in1974. Frye died in 1971 in Park Ridge, Illinois, where he hadlived for some time. No evidence has ever come to light indicating thatFrye married or had children.Quite a few Fryes lived in west-central Indiana, and some even in Logansport.This has caused some confusion: There was another John T.
Frye livingin Camden, Indiana, from 1932-1976, and Camden is only fifteen miles fromLogansport. This other John T.
Frye married in 1955 and had two sons.Several people wrote to tell me that John Frye had a brother, Samuel BaileyFrye, in Logansport, as well as a sister Eunice. Bailey was a ham (WA9OWH)and died only recently (2008) at age 90. However, Bailey's obituary does not mention John T. Frye, nor do the census recordsinclude Bailey in John Frye's family, so we can only assume he was unrelated,or perhaps a cousin. (Ditto Eunice.)Amazingly, he spent virtually all of his life in awheelchair due to a battle with polio when he was eighteen months old,and was never able to walk. The disease also affected his left hand,which he could use only imprecisely, and with difficulty.
His father(who was a machinist) built a very maneauverable three-wheeled scooterout of a girl's tricycle, and John used that to get around his smalland presumably crowded house for many years—the photo below shows Johnin the scooter when he was 66. He had several cars fitted out with handcontrols and did a great deal of traveling around the United States. Weknow that he had a 1963 Olds Dynamic 88; legend holds that he favoredBuicks, but we do not have confirming data at this time.(The photo is a screen capture of a microfiche scan of a1976 newspaper halftone, so alas, only so much can be done with it!)Frye was licensed as W9EGV in the 1920s, and graduated from LogansportHigh School in 1930. Most people have assumed that he attended PurdueUniversity because of Carl & Jerry's college career at fictional Parvoo,which shares details with Purdue in only the thinnest disguises (likethe Moss-Ade Stadium instead of Purdue's Ross-Ade Stadium) and sometimes,as with the Purdue/Parvoo radio station WCCR, no disguise at all. Butas best we know, he never attended Purdue, and in fact did not study engineeringat all.
He did attend Indiana University, Columbia, and the Universityof Chicago at one point or another, studying psychology, journalism, history,and English. We do not know whether or where he obtained a degree.Studying journalism and English clearly paid off.
Frye was a veryprolific contributor to the electronics and amateur radio magazines, withsupposedly 600 short pieces to his credit. The earliest published works I've seenin the literature are a series of short humorous items (titled 'Phone Band Funnies')in QST beginning August, 1947. However, he supposedly first appeared in Gernsback'sseminal Short Wave Craft (ancestor of )in the early 1930s. ( are classics.) He began writing a column called“Mac’s Service Shop” in Radio & Television News in April 1948,and it ran in one magazine or another (including Electronics World,another Ziff-Davis publication) for 28 years, until June, 1977. Thereare superficial resemblances between 'Mac's Service Shop' andCarl and Jerry: The column is nominally fiction, in which 'Mac,'the owner of a radio and TV service shop, talks about both the technicaland business aspects of the radio/TV service business to other people,often his sole and slightly clueless employee, Barney.
However, thereis no 'adventure' and the action doesn't typically move beyondthe shop. For a sample of 'Mac's Service Shop' in its lateryears, you can see scans of the August 1975 column hosted.In addition to his short articles, John Frye wrote a couple of very popularbooks on radio and servicing:. Basic Radio Course (Gernsback Library #44) first publishedin 1951, revised in 1955 and 1962, and reprinted by Tab at least aslate as 1977. Radio Receiver Servicing, 1960.Copies of these come up on Amazon and ABEBooks regularly, and if youcollect or restore old radios they are well worth having. They are notespecially rare, and I paid about $10 each for nice clean hardcovers.Basic Radio Course is a excellent overview of AM radio tech circa1950, well-written, and printed on a coated paper that has survived wellwithout yellowing or getting crumbly. The 1962 edition adds some limitedcoverage of solid state theory. Interestingly, my research has not showna copyright renewal for either Basic Radio Course or Radio ReceiverServicing, and so their copyrights have probably expired and bothhave now passed into the public domain.From his writing it's clear that Frye knew the radios and TVs of hisera inside and out, but I've been unable to determine where he learnedthe service trade, nor whether he worked in the service field.
We haveno evidence that he owned his own service shop, but from his nearly thirtyyears of Mac's columns it sure sounds like he did!A good many of the details we know about Frye's life are summarized inin the Logansportnewspaper announcing the release of an updated edition of Basic RadioCourse. (The photo was actually taken in 1951, and appears in anothershort article announcing the release of the book's first edition in thatyear.) Many thanks to Lisa Enfinger for passing a scan of this along tome. Doesn't Frye look a lot like a grown-up Jerry in the photo?Lisa also provided a clue as to why Frye patterned Parvoo Universityon Purdue: Her parents were very close friends of Frye's, and both studiedchemistry at Purdue in Frye's era. Frye maintained a lively correspondencewith both William and Margie McCaughey for many years, and probably visitedthem while they earned their degrees at Purdue in the late 1940s. Evenafter her parents moved to Tucson to teach at the University of Arizona,her mother (and Lisa too) would return to Logansport in the summers tovisit, and then spent a fair amount of time with John, who would takeyoung Lisa to the park on the Eel River in Logansport and buy her rideson their merry-go-round. Lisa's great-grandparents lived right acrossthe street from Frye, on Spear Street in Logansport. Her father, may have been the namesakeof the narrator of Mac's Service Shop.
Lisa's mother's uncle, Eugene Buntain,was a classmate of Frye's at Logansport High School. The two discoveredelectronics and ham radio at the school and were close friends; Lisa wondersif Uncle Gene were the inspiration for Carl.Why did Frye stop writing 'Carl & Jerry'? A couple of old-timershave hinted that he had had a falling-out with the editors at PopularElectronics toward the end of 1964. This is suggested by the factthat he began publishing a lot of articles in PE's main competitor, ElectronicsIllustrated, early in 1965. I do not have all issues of EI from thatera, but Frye appeared in the July 1964 issue with 'A Basic Coursein Vacuum Tubes.' From 1965 into late 1967 he was in most issuesof EI with a couple of multipart tutorials: 'The ABCs of Radio'beginning in September 1965, and 'The ABCs of Color TV' beginningin January 1967. The last issue I have in which Frye appears is September,1967—which is also when my subscription to EI expired.
I have a handfulof issues from 1968, and Frye does not appear in any of them, nor doeshe appear in any issues of Popular Electronics after that. 'Mac'sService Shop' ran until 1977, but Frye's other writing seems to haveceased ten years earlier.John T.
Frye died in January, 1985, at his home in Logansport.As always, I'd love to hear from you if you have additional details aboutJohn T. Frye's life and work beyond what I've posted here.Back in 2006, I tried to locate a few of my favorite Carland Jerry adventures, and discovered that old back issues of PopularElectronics are not easy to come by, and not always cheap.
Being atechnical book publisher in my day job, I had the notion that an anthologyof Carl and Jerry stories would be a good thing to put together, beforethe old magazines either crumbled to dust or ended up in landfills astheir owners passed on. After all, the first Carl and Jerry story—inthe very first issue of Popular Electronics—is now over halfa century old. Time flies when you're down in the basement building things,sheesh.So I located the owner of the Carl and Jerry copyrights,and obtained permission to republish them in anthology form. As I corneredan ever-larger pile of the magazines on eBay, I realized that a singlebook would not do it. There are 119 stories in all, representing closeto 250,000 words and 300 illustrations. The five anthologies togetherwill include every Carl and Jerry story by John T.
Frye, including allthe original illustrations. The stories will be published in chronologicalorder, by issue date. In general, there are two years' worth of storiesin each volume. The final volume contains a 'topic index' toall 119 stories, plus two brand new stories by long-time Carl and Jerryfans.All five books are now available, and may be ordered fromLulu.com. Click on the book volume links below to order.Availablenow:Availablenow:Availablenow:Availablenow:Availablenow:Note: The anthologies are printed and sold one at a timeby print-on-demand technology, and thus will not be available from bookstores.Alas, this means that you can't order them 'overnight' as theLulu system takes between 3 and 5 days to manufacture each book beforethe book is shipped.(Jeff Duntemann's blog).
I have, for some unknown reason, always been interested in ancient technology, mainly electronics and mechanical things and I have always wanted to make a true old fashioned style crystal radio. A crystal radio, or crystal set as it is sometimes called, is a radio that only uses the power of the radio waves picked up by the antenna to generate the sound heard in the head phones. The reason it is called a crystal set is because they use a mineral crystal as a diode for the detector in the circuit.
Quite a few years ago I found a book in the library called 'Radios That Work for Free' by K E Edwards and found a set of plans for a radio that I just had to make, unfortunately I did not have the resources to build it at the time so I made a photo copy of the pages from the book for future reference. Well I was poking around on the net the other day and found a site that sells copies of that old book, along with various other electronics books and parts related to crystal radios and decided to order a copy for myself along with two 365 pf variable capacitors needed for the circuit I copied from the book. The radio that I am going to build is the second one shown in the book but I am going to make some changes to the original set. The three changes I am going to make to the set are that I am going to build the set into a box instead of just having the control panel attached to a base board. I am also going to make an antique style 'Cats Whisker' style detector instead of using a Germanium diode and use a matching transformer so I can use a set of modern headphones instead of trying to find an antique high impedance set or a crappy little crystal earplug. I have written this instructable assuming the reader has basic wood working and electronics skills like making boxes and soldering, explaining the more involved and specific tasks in detail, as in winding the coil. Here is a scan of the circuit from the book.
The circuit is actually pretty simple, just two variable capacitors(C1 & C2), a coil(L) with 8 taps and a tap switch(S), a detector(D) and a set of phones(P). Without getting into the rather intensive math involved, I have taken classes on this stuff, here is in a nutshell how it all works.
Crystal radios mainly work on AM or Amplitude Modulation radio waves, there are some that well work on FM as well. AM radio waves are actually composed of two waves combined together, one is a high frequency wave called the carrier wave and the other is the lower frequency sound waves being transmitted. The carrier wave is on the order of 750 to 1500 kHz. And is used to transmit the sound wave.
The way it works is that the two waves are added together, or modulated, producing a signal that is of the same frequency as the carrier wave but its amplitude is determined by the sound wave(see second picture). The way a crystal radio actually works is pretty ingenious, it uses the coil L and variable tuning capacitor C1 as a low pass filter to only allow frequencies at the desired frequency of the carrier wave to be passed to the detector D.
1954 Boy First Book Of Radio Electronics Morgan Pdf Viewer Online
The detector then demodulates the signal by only letting the low frequency part of the signal to pass, ie the sound wave, to the headphones where they are then turned back into sound. There are no batteries, no transistors or amplifiers of any kind, the sound is produced solely by the energy of the filtered radio wave. Hardware: 3 x 6-32 2' long screws 11 x 6-32 3/8' long screws 2 x 6-32 3/4' long screws 6 x 6-32 1/4' long screws 4 x #6 1/2' long wood screws 22 x 6-32 hex nuts 2 x 6-32 thumb nuts 8 x #6 washers - sheet of 1/8' thick Plexiglas for panel 1 x 1/2'x6'x4' board, I used poplar as it is cheaper and looks nice you could also use pine or oak or what ever you like. 1 x 3/8'x6'x2' board, again I used poplar -some thin copper sheet, or brass (Scrap metal dealer or hobby shop) $4 for a large piece 1 x 3/8' dowel (All above items are from the hardware store. To wind the coil you well need: - 2' diameter tube - 1/4 lb of 20 gauge enameled copper wire - ruler - pencil - small drill - pliers - wire cutters 1) Mark and cut the tube to length: -With a ruler mark the tube at 5 inches from on end and wrap tape around the tube at that mark.With a sharp knife cut along the edge of the tape to make a nice even cut. 2) Using a ruler draw a strait line across the length of the tube. 3) Using the ruler make a mark on the line 1/2 inch from one end of the tube, this is were the coil well start.
4) Using a small drill, make a hole on the previously made mark, also make another hole about 1/4 down from that hole, the two holes well be used to secure the end of the wire. 5) Unwrap a few inches of wire from the end of your spool of wire and feed the end through the first hole drilled in the tube.
6) Pull the end of the wire through the first hole a couple of inches and then feed it back out through the other hole, this well lock the end of the wire onto the tube. 7) Start carefully wrapping the wire around the tube away from the starting hole. The hardest part is to keep the windings tight and even. 8) At the fifth winding use the pliers to make a loop in the wire by holding the wire in the pliers and folding the two ends down the twisting the wire around once. 9) Continue to wind the coil and make another loop at wraps 10, 16, 24, 32, 40, 52 and 65 after the loop at wrap 65 there are no more loops but you have to continue to wind the coil until you have 80 wraps.
These loops well become the taps in the coil in the finished circuit. 10) Once you have made 80 wraps drill two more holes, one on the line and one about 1/4' above it, right next to the previous wrap. 11) Cut the wire from the spool leaving a few extra inches of wire to feed through the holes.
12) Feed the wire through the first hole and back through the second, just like at the start and pull the wire tight to insure the windings are tight. 13) Measure the tube 1/2 inch from the end of the windings and cut off the excess tube so that the tube is even. In this step we well make the pieces for the tap switch.
The tap switch is used to select from the different sections of the coil using the loops/ taps made when we wound the coil. If you decide you do not want to make the tap switch from scratch you can use a rotary switch instead.
Also in the next step I am going to show how to make the cats whisker detector, this was one of the first types of detectors invented for use in radios, it uses a piece of mineral, like galena or in my case iron pyrite, and a fine wire to act as a simple diode. If you do not want to make the detector by hand you can use a common 1N34 germanium diode available from Radio Shack instead. To make the tap switch you well need: - strip of thin copper or brass 3/8' wide - one 2' long screw - one 1' long piece of dowel - one hex nut - one washer - super glue - paint or stain and lacquer Tools: - tin snips - drill - metal file - pliers - paint brush 1) Using a ruler and utility knife score a line 3/8' of an inch from one end of you sheet of copper. 2) Using tin snips cut the strip out along the line and re-flatten the strip with a hammer on a hard surface. 3) Cut the strip to 1-9/16' long.
4) Mark the strip 3/8' from one end all the way across. At the other end of the strip opposite the end you just marked measure in from each side 1/16' along the top.
Scribe a line from the marks on the top to the line 3/8' from the bottom and cut along the line with tin snips, this tappers the pointer down to 1/4' at the top. See forth picture. 5) Use a file to clean up the edges and round the ends of the pointer. 6) Cut a piece of dowel 1/2' long and drill a hole 5/32' down the center.
7) Holding a the dowel in position on the pointer use a nail in the center hole of the dowel to make a mark and drill a 5/32' hole through the pointer at that mark. 8) Slide a washer over the 2' long screw and then slip the dowel and pointer on after. Using a small drop of super glue, glue the pointer to the dowel and thread the nut onto the screw and tighten the nut. 9) You can either paint the knob, stain it like I am doing or just clear coat it and keep it the natural color of the wood. As mentioned you can omit this step in favor of a modern Germanium Diode instead, I have decided to make the detector from scratch to make the set more authentic. I well probably install a set of terminals so that I can use a diode as well if I do not want to fiddle with the Whisker. I actually got the plans for this detector from the book, 'The Boys first book of radio and electronics' by Alfred P.
This is a really great old book with loads of information on this kind of stuff with numerous plans for crystal radios, a tube radio and tube amplifiers, I would highly recommend this and any other book by this author if you can find them. To make the detector you well need: 1 - 3/8' wide strip of copper 1-7/8' long 1 - piece of heavy gauge copper wire about 2-1/2' long 1 - spring from a worn out ball point pen 1 - binding post Tools: - pliers - tin snips - strait edge and utility knife - drill and 5/32' drill bit - file - soldering iron and solder 1) Start by cutting a strip of 3/8' wide copper 1-7/8' long to make the crystal holder. 2) Mark and drill a 5/32' hole in the middle of the strip of copper. 3) Using a file on edge cut teeth into the ends of the strip of copper. 4) Using a large pair of pliers with jaws that are about 1/2' wide, hold the hold the strip of copper in the middle so that the strip is perpendicular to the jaws.
Fold the two ends up. 5) Bend the serrated ends over to make a set of jaws to hold the raw iron pyrite.(see photos) 6) Take the spring from the pen and straiten out one end so that it is about 3/4' long and then solder the spring to the end of the piece of bare copper wire. The case is made of 1/2' think by 6' wide boards, I am using Poplar on mine as it is cheap and accepts stain well. To make the case you well need: 1 x 1/2'x6'x4' long board 1 x 3/8'x6'x2' long board - glue - nails - finishing supplies, paint, stain, whatever Tools: - Saw, I am using a power miter box because I am lazy - Hammer, again I am lazy so I am using a pneumatic brad nailer with 1' long brads - Sanding block and sand paper, I use 220 because it well wear down to finer and finer grades as you use it so it leaves a nice surface for finishing. 1) The first thing that has to be done is to cut the boards to length to make the sides and front and back. You well need to cut 2 1/2'x6'x9' long boards for the front and back and 2 1/2'x6'x7' long boards for the two sides, also cut 2 3/8'x6'x7' long boards to be glued together for the bottom. 2) Next you need to glue the two sides and front and back together to make a box, the two side pieces go between the front and back not on the ends of the front and back.
3) Now would be a good time to use some wood putty to fill in the holes left by the nail set, or in my case the hammer of the pneumatic brad nailer. 4) To make the bottom you well need to glue the two 3/8' pieces that are cut to 7' long along the sides that are 7' long. Start by sticking a wide piece of masking tape, 1' is probably good enough, along the 7' long edge of one of the boards leaving it sticking out half way, see photo. 5) Butt the other piece of wood up to the first one and align the ends so that they are flush and stick the tape down to the other board while holding the two firmly together. 6) Once the tape is stuck to the other board flip the two over and fold them together so you can apply glue to the edges that well be stuck together. 7) Spread some glue to the edge of one of the boards where the seam well be and lay the two boards out flat again of a flat hard surface. 8) Push down along the seam to ensure that the two boards and even and all the excess glue squeezes out and wipe up the excess.
9) Put another piece of tape alone the seam on this side making sure that the seam is flat and even then place another board on top of the two being glued together and place a heavy weight on top of that to hold it down while it is drying. 10) After the glued has dried on the bottom, pull the tape off and trim it to length so that it fits inside of the bottom of the box and glue it in. 11) I also decided to make a lid for my prototype, I glued two boards together the same way as I did on the bottom and cut it to size so that it sets over the top of the box. 12) Next add some slats to the inside of the box to screw the panel to, if you are making a lid set the slats down 1' from the top, it not set them 1/8' from the top so that the panel well be flush with the top of the box. 13) Finish the box with what ever finish you desire, I chose to staining mine and then coating it with two coats if polyurethane, you could paint it instead which would be simpler. 14) Once the finish has had adequate time to dry, tape the top down to the top of the box in the orientation that is well be in when finished on the three sides that well not be hinged. 15) Using pieces of tape to hold the hinges in place, drill pilot holes for the hinge screws and install the lower screws.
After the bottom half of the hinge is mounted pull the tape off and attach the upper half. 16) Remove the tape holding the top on and make sure the hinges do not bind. To make the front panel you well need - some 1/8' Plexiglas - graph paper - pencil and ruler - tape - drill and 5/32' drill - metal strait edge - utility knife 1) Start by cutting the Plexiglas to size, the easiest way to do this it to use a strait edge and knife to score the Plexiglas and then to break it by firmly holding it over a sharp edge and snapping off the excess. If you are mounting the panel on top of the box make the panel 8' by 9', if you are mounting it inside of the box like I am cut the panel to 7' by 8'.
2) Next you well need to figure out who you well want to have the panel laid out. To do this you well need to collect all of your parts so that you know who big things are and how they well have to be in relationship to everything else. 3) Next take your graph paper and draw a full size representation of the panel on the graph paper and use your parts as a guide to figure out where all of the holes well need to be drilled to accommodate everything. The only two measurements that are already determined are that the holes for mounting the coil have to be 3-1/2' apart and that for the tap switch you well need 9 evenly spaced holes around a center hole with a radius of 1-1/4'. It also helps to have the coil and tap switch close together making it easier to wire the two together and keep the wires short. 4) Now make a photocopy of your plan and tape it to the front of the panel and use it as a guide to drill the holes in the panel.
Note: Plexiglas can be tricky to drill, don't run your drill at too high of speed as it well melt the plastic to much and also don't use too much downward force when drilling as that well cause cracking. It is also a good idea to practice on a small scrap before hand so you can get an idea of what works the best. 5) After all the holes have been drilled you can paint the panel if you want, you can also leave it clear if you want to see the insides of the radio which is cool. Start by taking some fine sandpaper or a Scotchbrite pad and scuffing up the surface to be painted.
Once the surface is evenly scuffed up clean it with dish soap and dry it thoroughly. 6) Paint the panel, I am using black spray enamel. Right now that all the pieces have been made it is time to put it all together.
Materials: - all the screws, washers, nuts, solder lugs and other miscellaneous hardware - the case, detector parts, panel, tap switch wiper ect Tools: - flat head screwdriver - pliers - 5/16' open ended wrench - soldering iron and solder - wire cutters and strippers 1) First we well start by assembling the tap switch. A) Start by adding the screws for the tap switch, place a screw in the hole and add a solder lug to the back side and tighten it all down with a nut. Make sure to position the solder lug pointing to the center of the the circle. B) Slide a washer over the end of the tap switch wiper and install the wiper in the center hole. C) Slide another washer over the screw and add a nut tightening it down so that the wiper turns with a some resistance so that it well not lose its setting when in use. Slide a solder lug onto the screw and add another nut tightening it down to the other nut locking the two together.
D) Cut the excess screw off. 2) Installing the coil. A) Install the 2' coil mounting screws through the front of the panel and secure them with nuts.
B) Solder short, about 3' to 4' long, pieces of wire to each of the 8 coil taps. C) Solder the tap wires to the tap switch contacts starting with the first tap a the fifth winding in the first contact and progressing all the way around the tap switch until all 8 taps are wired. D) The ninth contact of the tap switch is connected to the end of the coil along with a piece of wire that well be used later. E) Solder a length of wire to the tap switch wiper. F) Install the coil onto the coil mounting screws with a washer and nut on each side. 3) Installing the remaining components. A) Mount the stereo headphone jack to the panel.
B) Next mount the crystal holder with a screw, solder terminal and nut. If you are using a germanium diode instead of the crystal holder install a Fahnstock clip instead, still using a screw and solder lug. C) Mount the binding post for the cats whisker tightening down only lightly so that the binding post can be swiveled back and forth to help aid in setting the detector.
Again if using a diode install a Fahnstock clip using a screw and solder lug. D) Now using 6 6-32 1/4' long screws, mount the variable capacitors and turn the knob to make sure that the stator does not run into the ends of the screws, if it does you well need to place washers between the panel and the capacitor frames so that they clear. A) First solder the wire coming from the 9th tap switch contact/ end of coil to the bottom of the binding post. B) Glue the impedance matching transformer to the back of the panel between detector and the headphone jack and solder one side of the primary winding to the detector crystal holder. C) Solder one side of the matching transformer secondary to both the ring and tip terminals of the stereo headphone jack.
Solder the other end to the sleeve terminal. D) Solder a wire to connect the frames of the two variable capacitors together.
Also solder the unused end of the matching transformer primary to the one of the two capacitor frames. Solder the wire coming from the tap switch wiper to one of the capacitor frames as well.(see photo) e) Solder a wire from the stator of the tuning capacitor C1, the one closest to the antenna and ground binding posts, to the antenna binding post. Solder another wire from the ground capacitor C2 to the ground binding post. 5) Final Assembly a) Set the panel into the box onto the mounts and install the mounting screws. B) Use glue stick to glue the dial faces to the front panel and install the knobs. C) See next step on how to use the set.
1) Start off by connecting up the antenna and ground. For the antenna you can use anything from a long piece of wire tacked up along the top edge of a wall to a nice long outdoor wire antenna. The ground can be any suitable ground connection, ie the center screw on a power outlet, a iron cold water pipe or an outdoor ground spike driven 5 feet into the ground. 2) Connect up the headphones. 3) Mount a small piece, about 1/4', of iron pyrite in the jaws of the detector and position the cats whisker so that it is touching the surface of the iron pyrite. If you are using a germanium diode install it in the Fahnstock clips with the band facing the antenna and ground binding posts. 4) Turn both knobs all the way to the left and select the 1st tap contact.
Start turning the left tuning knob slowly to the right and see if you can find a station, if you find a station but it is towards the high end of the dial move the tap selector up one and turn the tuning knob down until you find it again. 5) If you are using the antique style detector and the signal is coming in very weakly you can try moving the cats whisker around on the surface of the iron pyrite until it comes in more strongly, this well take some trial and error until you find were it works best.
6) If you are receiving two stations at once and one is drowning the other out you can use the ground coupling knob to help single out one or the other. 7) Make a logbook of what settings brought in what stations, this well help finding the station again later. 8) Fiddle with it, it takes some practice to tune these kinds of radios and remember the only thing powering the radio is the radio waves received by the antenna so the signals well not always be that loud but a nice long antenna well collect more energy producing louder signals.
Wow, this is really elaborate and dedicated! Personally I am not much of a technical person but I am sure a sucker when it comes to antiques. I always feel that they are so classy and makes me feel that I am able to time travel just my interacting with such antiques.
However, I do not think I would be able to accomplish building such timeless radio on my own as it just seems too tough for me. But if I were to make one on my own I would most probably put some antique silver designs on it just to add on that vintage feel. This has to be, so far, bar none, absolutely, positively, THE BEST Instructable that I have EVER been to. It is also the most professionally documented. The photographs are crisp and clear and are provided not only at the most important steps, but also many of the intermediate steps.The instructions are easily understood, easy to read, with proper grammar and correct spelling.It, in nautical terminology, “Blows all of those mint box instructables clear out of the water and sends them all to Davy Jones' Locker”.Ohm you certainly have done one “bang-up” job, you are the only instructor that I have subscribe to.This Instructable, in my not so humble opinion, deserves the “Grand prize of Grand Prizes award” if there is one.