Wavelength


Wavelength

Van Morrison sings: "Waaaaaaaaavelength..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePm3FhAfGOo

When I was younger, I pored through my ARRL Handbook, built a crystal set with windings around a Quaker Oats can, strung a wire in the attic, the whole deal. But I crashed and burned on the whole Morse code thing. Morse code seemed to be for prison escape movies, and not for adventures in Spaaaaaace.

I went on to work in radio and television, including doing a little broadcast tower and point to point microwave stuff. But I never got a ham license.

However, as befits my increasing age, general crankiness, the elimination of the requirement for 13 wpm of code, and the amazingly feature rich, cheap radios from Baofeng... I let my arm get twisted into taking the test a couple of weeks ago. I kind of surprised myself by passing. Undoubtedly the saving throw was when they asked a couple of questions about tubes, just as if people still use the dang things.

As you can imagine, the amateur radio crowd is rather... undiverse. There were a gaggle of younger folks in camo that probably would identify as preppers.

All the Elmers I knew were inveterate tinkerers, some of whom liked to build humongous things that sometimes fell over, sometimes caught fire. I am definitely of that tribe, when resources are available. I expect it will be fun.

Do not expect me to get a matching license plate.

Here are a couple of examples of crystal sets, including a pretty fancy one using MOSFETs:

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/QST%2520Binaries/LloydCrystalRadio.pdf

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/culter.pdf

As Charles Osgood used to say, "See you on the radio!"

Originally shared by ****

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