That sure brings back some memories S. I made one with a piece of Galena and a cat whisker and a headset. I didn't have any tuning, just a wire for an antenna and a wire to connect to ground - and it worked ! Later I got a diode, as that seemed to work better, but I also managed to get a transistor to work as detector as well simply by the way the leads were connected. It was great fun experimenting. Dad bought me one similar to what you describe, but it was red and white plastic in the shape of a rocket, and it had a metal rod that you could push in or pull out to tune. It had a piece of germanium that slid in and out of a coil. Your son would love it s.mm

Peace +

"Ron Hardin" wrote in message ...
We used to build them with 1N34A diode, capacitor across the headphones,
and a coil wound on a toilet paper tube, with taps on the coil
that you'd clip an allegator clip to, for tuning.

Assemble atop wooden board.

There were some with an actual cat whisker instead of the diode,
but we went the modern way mostly.

The project is mostly winding the coil, many turns of enameled wire,
and scraping bits of it clear of enamel for the allegator clip
landing spots.

Another tuning method was a slider over the coil but it never
seemed like that would be very easy to get to work reliably.

Antenna and ground across the live portion of the coil.
--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.