[Boatanchors] Fox Hole Radio

[Chuck Swiger]

Bringing up the foxhole radio thread again - I *just* ran across
this article last night in an Oct. 1944 issues of "Popular Mechanics"
about same - scanned and posted here:

http://www.widomaker.com/~cswiger/foxhole.jpg

It doesn't specifically mention the pencel lead but looks like one
is bound to the safty pin in the photo.

         Chuck
         kb4new

At 12:28 PM 9/19/02 -0400, you wrote:

>Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Re Fox Hole Radio
>Duane Fischer, W8DBF wrote:
>
> > I have heard the stories of WW2 soldiers making a radio from a razor
>blade, some  wire, a lead pencil and a safety pin. My question:
>precisely how? Perhaps one of you who made one can enlighten the rest of
>us? Thanks.
>
>
> > You needed more than that. You needed some wire and a form to make a
>coil, and an earphone. It was a standard crystal set circuit, perhaps
>with a tuning cap and perhaps it used stray capacitance. I assume
>tuning, if any, was very crude. The
> > detector was the razor blade and pencil lead. The blue oxide layer is
>non-linear and is a crude point contact diode sort of thing. The safety
>pin was used as a spring to hold the pencil lead against the blade, as I
>remember.
> > -John
>
>AES sells a kit to make this radio set and I built it some years back.
>It is very crude. I asked the WW II discussion lists if any of the
>veterans remember such a set and the answer was none had ever seen one.
>
>
>
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