9/1/2023 0 Comments Foxhole radio plansGee, Curt.I hope your remarks of having left "bad scars that last on me to this day" are to be taken as tongue-in-cheek. My experience was similar, but at about age 10.A used razor blade compliments of my father and a hand-wound coil of about 50 turns of 18awg magnet wire with a slider of thin metal stock proved to be just so-so with respect to performance when hooked to a 110 foot longwire up feet and an earth ground outside my bedroom window.Headphones were 2K ohms as purchased with my Knight Kit CPO from Allied Radio.One station only (WKBW, 50kw at 1520 kc ) no matter where the slider was positioned on the coil.A brief discussion with the neighbor across the stree who was an electronics tech resulted in my winding a "real coil" of several hundred turns using smaller gauge magnet wire which brought one or two more stations but WKBW still was there now as QRM to the others.Later, a 1134 diode replaced the razor blade detector with improved reliability but I was disappointed with the same poor selectivity. It's a classic example of improvising something useful from almost nothing. Most of these wartime sets did not have a slider/tuner arm. Most of them used a razor blade which had a wire running from each blade between the headphone terminals and antenna with a pencil lead sitting on the blade. high impedance magnetic style as used in B-17's and other aircraft. 3 History 4 References Designs Foxhole radios were built using numerous designs. The typical headphones available were the U.S. The foxhole radio was something created by GI's in forward areas in WWII. Not to mention keeping it away from a noise source like a monitor-computer combo or a TV set. The most important thing is that the headphones be high impedance.Ī good ground and a long antenna will help. The headphones I used were high impedance magnetic Cannonball brand, as used to be available everywhere (but not anymore.) I probably could have done better with a crystal headphone set (harder to come by.) In the 1960's, those little white plastic earplug headphones which came with pocket transistor radios were crystal, but the modern stereo earbuds seem to be low-impedance magnetic and they won't work. I built a foxhole radio when I was 8 years old and it worked, so don't give up!
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