After having fun with my CR1 and impressing myself with its performance, I thought I'd do a performance comparison between it and my "Boy Electrician" regenerative radio. On those evenings when the "skip" is in, I can hear stations over miles away. As I experimented with it, I was very impressed with its performance both in terms of its excellent selectivity and, for a crystal radio, its sensitivity. So, here's the first chapter of my proposed book "The Old Geezer Electrician" and I hope you like it.
What is more, I am presenting this as a building project using the same simple skills and techniques that just about everybody possesses and that I used to build my radio. It took a young boy, me, and it inspired him to go on and learn more about electricity and eventually make his living working with electricity.
Well, a lot of time has passed since I built the Boy Electrician radio yeah, like 55 yearsbut I can truthfully say that the little project did exactly what Mr. Without the need to heat a cathode, my radio needs only a single 9 volt battery. Geezerola is just a silly name I chose, you can call your radio anything you want This little radio is functionally identical to Armstrong's and my triode tube radios except, unlike triode vacuum tubes, the crystal in my triode will pass electrons without heating the cathode. Both this and Armstrong's radio need an 'A' battery and a 'B' battery.
My regenerative radio from There is a link to my regenerative radio here and at the end of this story. The specified tube socket and the exact coil form were both unavailable, but half the fun of building this radio came from the opportunity to improvise like using a toilet roll for a coil form and to invent construction techniques that matched my building skills. Of course, I did not have the skill and tools to build the radio as it was described. I was very lucky because the 1H4 tube the project required was still available, otherwise the project might have ended right there. I had built and experimented with crystal radios before, but I was ready to move up to something better. One project that really caught my fancy was the Armstrong Regenerative radio. Still, the book contained a lot of good, solid basic stuff and several wonderful projects that a kid could build and learn while doing. Morgan and his "Boy Electrician" book went back a long way, with the first edition printed in By the time I got this book, aroundthe technology in it was already 20 to 50 years old. Visible toward the top left is the brass knurled knob for the antenna connection.Back in the late 50s and early 60s my nascent career in electronics was encouraged by the many wonderful construction articles in Popular Electronics, Popular mechanics and Popular Science magazines, but it was a edition of an old book I found in the City Library that really got me going. Barely visible at the bottom left and center are blue wires emerging from holes in the wood where they are soldered to the variable capacitor and the transformer. Note the red and black ink on the square tubing, marking the best slider positions. Note that the insulation has been removed from the 16 guage wire along the paths of the four sliders. It uses square brass tubing with a strip of sheet brass soldered to it. The knurled nut bears down on a brass washer with its underside soldered to a hex nut. These are made of brass screws and big knurled nuts. This view shows the antenna and ground binding posts at the back edge. Wire emerges through small holes on the back sides of the variable capacitors and transformer. All other wiring is on the underside of the wood base. The wires to the slider bars run down internally through the wood supports.
Sorry, I don't recall how many turns, but don't worry, it's not critical. It was wound as one long coil, then cut in the middle. The tube is a 12 inch section of 2" PVC pipe. It also helped me get close to my design goal of perfect symmetry. I've seen enough of those I decided to try something that looked truly wireless. Crystal radios are so simple, they are often built with exposed wiring. Crystal Radio enthusiasts will note the striking absence of wiring.