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1951 My First Homebrew Radio Project --- A cigar box crystal set --- |
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| This faded, blurry, color photo is dated May 1951 and shows my desk at age 12 when we lived at 4515 Magoun Avenue in East Chicago, Indiana. It is the only photograph I have of my first radio project: a cigar box crystal set based on an article in SCIENCE AND MECHANICS by Arthur Trauffer, "Loop Crystal Set," August 1950, pages 185-187. The loop antenna is the main coil of the crystal set and is wound around the perimeter of the cigar box. Alas, the crystal set disappeared decades ago, but I still have the magazine.
Also shown is my first ARRL Radio Amateur's Handbook, the 1951 edition, and my first tube-type radio, a Trav-Ler, Model 5029. Since I didn't have a short wave radio, I remember using this radio for broadcast DX, including clear channel Texas stations late at night with the assistance of my trusty bible of radio stations, WHITE'S RADIO LOG. Very exciting to a 12-year-old in Indiana! Then, I remember changing the alignment capacitors to the point at which the radio's tuning range somehow went beyond the broadcast band into the shortwave spectrum. There, I could hear a few morse code signals and an occasional mobile police call. This poor 5-tube misaligned radio did not work very well after that, but my interest in ham radio was launched.
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1955 |
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| Another faded, blurry photo--the only surviving one from 1955 when we lived at 4142 Magoun Avenue in East Chicago, Indiana. Equipment shown beginning with the top shelf: my first genuine HF radio, a Hallicrafters 5R10A. The 2nd shelf, left to right: a 1947 FM Pilotuner, Model T601, wired to function as the IF amp/detector for a mil-quality FM tuner sub-chassis from a 1948 Capehart console, Model 413P. Both are sitting on a homebrew preamp. Next to them is a homebrew power supply for both the preamp and the Capehart. On the 3rd shelf sits a homebrew Williamson amplifier with push-pull 6L6s, one 6SN7, two 6J5s, and a Partridge WWFB/0/0.95 output transformer.
About a dozen RADIO-ELECTRONICS and RADIO_TELEVISION NEWS magazines are stacked in addition to the 1949 "Book of Knowledge" encyclopedia below the amplifier. I can't date them. In addition, the five books on the second shelf were probably the only books I had at age 15. Long forgotten, they could be identified by enlarging the photo. They are:
One Two Three Infinity, George Gamow, 1953 The Universe and Dr. Einstein, Lincoln Barnett, 1953 Mind At the End of Its Tether, H. G. Wells, 1946 Science and the Purpose of Life, Boris Sokoloff, 1950 |
 4515 Magoun Avenue, East Chicago, Indiana, in 1951 |
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