[MRCA] The Joys of Grandfatherhood

[Rich Arland]

I just experienced an epiphany! Two of my grandkids (the ones who live at Fortress Meade....you know, home of the National Security Agency; "In God We Trust, Everyone Else We Monitor!") have been here for the long weekend. Kielan, 12 and her brother K.C., 5, are both somewhat intrigued by Pop-Pop's radio gear...green radios, black radios, kit radios, Ten-Tec radios, etc. 

About a month ago I bought a book on crystal sets. Kielan started reading it and wanted to know if we could build a simple crystal set? Oh, boy!!! These are the times us Old Pharts live for!!!!! Could we? Oh, yeah, we certainly could!

I poured out the contents of a large Oatmeal box into a plastic container (I have yet to do a study of the effects of dry and wet Oatmeal on the total inductance of an Oatmeal box coil form), grabbed about 100 feet of #22 wire, an old set of Trimm  Dependables (2K Z), a 1N60 diode, a .001 disk cap and some Fanstock clips. Double sided foam tape holds the Fanstock clips onto the plastic lid of the Oatmeal container. We wound 40 turns of #22 wire onto the Oatmeal box, twisting eyelet "taps" every five turns, secured the ends, mounted the clips to the lid, put the cap and diode into the circuit, all the while Pop-pop was explaining the difference between "series" and "parallel" connections. We then took our creation into the 2nd floor radio room and hooked it up to one side of the 40M Extended Double Zepp (EDZ), clipped the ground side of the coil to a mic connector on a nearby rig (don't you always ground your mic plugs?) and low and behold: "Rush Limbaugh" was suddenly coming through the headphones. 

Both the kids were amazed (so was I, as it had been a long time since I'd played with crystal sets), my wife, the Beautiful and Talented Patricia, KB3MCT, is also amazed (her husband actually completed a project when he said he would.....AND it worked!), my kids, Kyle, KF4TIV, and Gwen, KB4UNT, are both amazed that ANYTHING I build works....Hey, it was a "win, win, win" situation. 

Point: We all need to be training our respective replacements in the radio hobby so give your kids and/or grandkids a chance to experience radio. Whet their appitite with a simple project and then let the magic of radio do the rest. Next mission: (when we encounter decent weather) some model rockets with telemetry payloads, followed by a Basic STAMP controlled robot....Man this could end up costing me money!!


Vy 73 to All and thanks for the bandwidth.

Rich K7SZ