[Milsurplus] Doubting the Foxhole Radio, conclusions

Fri Aug 3 09:04:11 EDT 2012

My Dad was a radio operator in the USMC during Korea. He said aboard ship
the would string a long wire to listen to the BBC aboard ship. I guess this
practice was only done under certain circumstances because I guess enemy
forces (Russians?) Could detect their location somehow by them firing up a
receiver...I assume picking up the IF somehow?

I was watching a documentary on the Iraq war made in 2003. The Marines were
using their gear in the Humvee to listen to the BBC. So I guess its still
done today.
On Aug 3, 2012 8:22 AM, "C.Whitaker" <whitaker at pa.net> wrote:

> 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
> >>
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