[SMCARA] Bootleg radio

[Clarke, Tom AIR4.0P NATOPS]

Hah!  Didn't we all do something "slightly illegal" in our younger days?

My pal, Peter Miller and I built a so called "phono oscillator" from plans we found in a library book - no internet or google in those days (1951)!  It used a single 117L7 tube running directly from the AC line (an electrocution looking for a victim!) and we pretty much covered the neighborhood.  Fortunately we lost interest in the project before the Friendly Candy Company (FCC) came to visit and we moved on to some other great adventure.

I think that next adventure was to wire a couple of old "candlestick" telephones between our houses.  That was fun until the phone company took exception to our stringing wire on their Phone poles.  We came home from school one day to find a "birds nest" of wire in our yard!

Our fathers worked for GE in Schenectady, so getting wire was no problem.  Dad would bring home rejected field windings  from the Small Electrical Motor plant that contained "miles of #16 Formvar wire.  Yep, in the good old days they just tossed tons of nice copper wire into the dump.

I suspect that Pete and Sam have similar adventures in their past!

Many years later, we discovered that we both had gravitated to ham radio!

Tom/W4OKW

-----Original Message-----
From: smcara-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:smcara-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Tom Shelton
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 9:01 PM
To: smcara at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [SMCARA] Bootleg radio

Here’s a fun read – for my students please don’t try this at home...

http://www.radioworld.com/article/the-story-of-bootleg-radio-1610/278 

Tom Shelton, AB3IC