Late check-in :-)

>Hmm.  I wonder, if my initial attempts at homebuilt crystal radios
>had worked better (or "worked at all"), if that would have been
>enough to make the spark grow in me?  ...  BillW

I'm gonna say, "probably".  My dad and I built a "crystal" radio out of a 
piece of wood, a coil wound over cardboard, and the detector was a pencil 
"lead" and a razor blade.   The antenna was the TV aerial lead.  It didn't 
work.  I could get static when I moved the detector, but something wasn't 
right.  I also had a "real" crystal radio which did work.  We stole the 
diode out of it and made the homebuilt work with it.  So we showed where 
the problem was.  I often suspected the razor blade + pencil lead was a 
prank or misinformation, but I know the principle behind it 
nowadays.  Never owned a piece of galena, though.

The day I got my novice license one guy loaned me a transmitter and showed 
me how to string up an antenna.  I learned how to tune and load the 
transmitter from that (tapped coil).  Then another guy gave me a box of 
parts and a schematic, so I could build my own.  From that I learned why 
diodes are rated for "inverse" and not "reverse" voltage, and also that 
besides RFI bypassing stuff in the shack, sometimes you have to do to the 
same inside the transmitter!

Oops, wrong story. I was going to talk about how I became interested in 
other "modes" of communication.  I had a facsimile machine, then got a 
teletype machine, messed with slowscan TV, tried to do some amateur 
television, then packet radio. Not an inclusive list.  There is always 
something to play with.  2 meters, sure, but that was just "infrastructure".

WA2QMI



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