[Boatanchors] Re Fox Hole Radio

[Glen Zook]

You beat me to the "reference"!  If I remember
correctly, the instructions started with something
like "walk up to an unmanned tank, reach in, and
'liberate' a set of headphones".  One headphone was
kept intact and the other served as the source for the
wire for the tuning coil.

Unfortunately, the razor blades now produced do not
have the heat treated finish that the ones during
World War II had.  When you can find a "blue" double
edged razor blade today that finish is primarily
applied by a painting process.  It was the heat action
on the blade that produced the chemical changes that
allowed for the diode action.

Since variable capacitors were not common in the
field, the circuit basically used stray capacitance
and inductance between two coils to tune.

I understand from those who actually used these things
in the field that they were very difficult to get to
work.  You had to spend hours just finding the "right"
spot on the razor blade and then hope that there was a
radio station nearby running enough power to be heard.
 It was sort of like hunting all over a piece of
galena for the "sweet" spot!

Glen, K9STH


--- "J. Forster" <jfor@quik.com> wrote:

No, never seen it. It  was in a Popular Electronics or
some such 40+ years ago.


=====
Glen, K9STH

Web sites

http://home.attbi.com/~k9sth
http://home.attbi.com/~zcomco

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