Crystal Radio with Fool's Gold for Detector

Homebrew crystal radio with fool's gold for detector.
http://www.gadgeteer.us

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• SolderSmoke
• ham
• radio
• M0HBR
• N2CQR
• electronics
• amateur
• crystal

[toy741life]

AHAHAH thats indian!!!

[sallyt17]

A great project. For what it's worth my simplest Xtal set made during World War Two, had a home wound broadcast coil, a tiny piece of shiny coal as a detector, and a tiny coiled piece of bee-hive frame wire for a cats-whisker. I listened with an old telephone ear piece rescued from the local rubbish dump. With a simple outdoor wire aerial I heard two stations up to 100 miles away.

[co2isgoodal]

I have been building xtal radios for years.

Iron pyrites work pretty well.

I was actually able to get some DX with a razorblade detector. 300 miles, unamplified.

[infowarguy]

It's picking up Cell PHONE!!

[TheKC1ML]

LOL, that was s cool!!!

[XtalQRP]

Nice video. I have a 1920's homebrew set that uses galena for a detector then feeds the rectified output into a Marconi S215 tetrode for AF amplification. Crude but effective, I hear the continent nightly from Cornwall. Tunes 350 - 920 khz.

Kind regards,

Robs/M6GLD

[thedarkone2134]

@artifactingreality Why?

[watcher818]

@killerdalek You could do that of course, but part of the fun is using Galena or other material as a detector, then manually finding the sweet spot where the unit is detecting..

[lostnmusik]

As a kid , Not sure when that ended, I built a crystal radio using a Boston company's Gillette blued double sided razor blade and a short piece of pencil graphite pressing on the blued surface of the blade. It was tough to wrap stiff wire around the short pencil lead without breaking it but it worked great - Science is still fun even at 62 years old. Bob E N1UUE Mexico Maine USA

[artifactingreality]

now throw it away and buy a radio.