[Milsurplus] Doubting the Foxhole Radio, conclusions

[C.Whitaker]

de WB2CPN
My derived experience is that "front lines" of today
are far more regimented than those of Anzio and
WWII. A well talented "Scrounger", or "Com See,
Com Saw" in WWII France, was an asset to have
in the group. Almost anything could be had for a
price, (meaning a swap). That's how the Filipinos
got all those "Jeepneys".
I spent my military time in Communications, so it
was easy for that type to get things, and do things
that the average "grunt", (which is US Marine Corps
talk), ever heard of.
General Rule: It only took one Razor Blade Radio,
one War Correspondent, and one radio magazine
in the States, to produce thousands of these radios.
My favorite was the one where a pair of headphones
were modified to replace one receiver with a small
detector chrystal in parallel. Radar had crystals.
Clete
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++



On 8/3/2012 1:15 AM, appo2 at juno.com wrote:
> Well,,original radio communications used spark gap transmitter,,,and so
> called
> coherent detector receiver,,there were no vacuum tubes.coherent detector
> must
> be shaked if it were dot or dash in cw.But it worked,changed the course
> of wars.
> On Thu, 2 Aug 2012 21:28:00 -0700 "Hue Miller" <kargo_cult at msn.com>
> writes:
>> The ancient ones used no-gain receivers with actual tuned circuits
>> and antenna matching,
>> and the LF spark transmitters, to achieve the distance you
>> mentioned, were, I think, quite
>> more than a few kilowatts (at least in input power ).
>>
>> No one doubts such a radio works ? minimally. You note the great
>> output boost when
>> the tuned circuit is brought into resonance. Also, I have to wonder
>> how some infantry
>> officer had time, and room to rig an antenna, during the pounding
>> the Allies took at
>> the Anzio invasion site. There is, I believe, a grain of truth to
>> the story, but I suspect
>> it got helped along because it was a great story. Perhaps this could
>> have happened
>> after the Germans were driven farther away from the beachhead, where
>> their tank
>> forces  were decimated by  by fire from U.S. ships. How many
>> soldiers actually
>> built the �eFoxhole Radio�f? Maybe a few; maybe only one, that�fs
>> a possibility, and
>> maybe it grew from there.
>>
>> Someone wrote that Allied forces had a number of troop entertainment
>> receiver
>> I dispute that this is true of ground forces. I have seen minimal
>> reference to S-29,
>> Zeniths, R-100 and so on owned by U.S. ordinary troops. My father
>> mentioned
>> listening to Axis Sally via his gun battery�fs radio equipment.
>> Probably most
>> broadcast listening done by using the service radio equipment. (
>> Anecdote
>> fellow told me:  �gOfficer said, ----, there�fs a knocked out
>> German convoy on
>> the road there. Go on down and see if there�fs anything you can
>> use. So I got
>> this receiver, Torn.E.b., and kept it with me til the end. I used it
>> to listen to
>> baseball games from the U.S.A.�h )
>> The German army, I can think of at least 5, 6 battery powered radios
>> that
>> were troop morale types, and a couple more that were AC-DC mains
>> types.
>> Ironically, the list of stations permitted to be listened to, was
>> very strictly
>> limited.
>>
>> �gMany military double headsets of WW2 were 2000 ohms to 15,000
>> ohms
>> impedance, a good match for a crystal set. The 600 ohm stuff was
>> more
>> common among Army Air Forces, not ground Army radios�h.
>>
>> This may have been true early in the war, but the impedance standard
>> became low impedance.
>> Also, an article I saw, which supposedly illustrated the Foxhole
>> Radio, showed it equipped
>> with a standard Western Electric telephone technicians single
>> headphone. I am familiar with
>> that type. You know, there really weren�ft that many traditional
>> headphones floating around
>> at the front lines. Phone type handsets, yes.
>>
>> Maybe the articles on this project should read more like this:
>> �gBuild Lt. M. L. Rupert�fs
>> Razor Blade Radio�h  instead of like this: �gBuild the Foxhole
>> Radio used by Soldiers�h.
>> Of course, the second title has more audience appeal.
>>
>> One You Tube respondent said yes, they used such radios in POW
>> camps. All the
>> stories I have read about POW radios described radios with a radio
>> tube, not
>> crystal radios. Only one account I can recall, about an American
>> general at a
>> Japanese camp at Shanghai, China, who built a crystal radio entirely
>> from scratch, and
>> I do mean entirely. I gather, altho I am a little vague on the
>> details, that there still was
>> an international ? neutral reserve there, not suppressed by the
>> Japanese, so there
>> were more or less independent radio stations there.
>>
>> Many thanks to Carlo Strozzi for pointing out that Rome Radio at 250
>> kW was only
>> 15 miles away, which definitely dispelled my doubts that the Foxhole
>> Radio would
>> work at all.
>> -Hue Miller
>>
>> ______________________________________________________________
>> Milsurplus mailing list
>> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/milsurplus
>> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>> Post: mailto:Milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
>>
>> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> ____________________________________________________________
> Woman is 57 But Looks 27
> Mom publishes simple facelift trick that angered doctors...
> http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/501b5ecac996b5eca29d4st02duc
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Milsurplus mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/milsurplus
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html