ME a doctor? Thank goodenss NO!
I started tinkering with the radio the afternoon we got the antenna up.
A friends dad was in the NG or reserve and he gave me some "nifty"
earphones that I had to add to my radio. I still have the scar on my
right leg where I dropped a big splotch of molten solder while I was
attempting to solder the earphone jack. I was wearing shorts and my
parents were very upset, They thought I had better sense then tto work
with 700F metal while in shorts. Since the radio had an isolation
transformer that I used under pain of losing my radio, my dad just made
sure that I knew enough to stay out of the B+. It may sound like I
made all the mods in a smooth linear maner, but it was nothing that
organised. Far from it. When my uncle dropped by on his way back from
leave I asked him about these strange sounds. Tune in FSK and CW in AM
and you will see what I meant. He used his little portable trnsisotr
AM/MW/BCB Sony? as a BFO, the LO harmonics where strong enough to at
least get the point across. He made a hand drawn copy of the schematic
that dad's friend gave me the night he replaced the caps in the radio.
From that he devised some simple improvements. I was 12 years old.
Other then homework and my choes,I had a lot of free time. My parents
limited my TV watching to a few shows a week. So radio kept me out of
worse trouble. My uncle would dream up a mod and mail it too me. Those
that requried me drilling the metal chasis my dad inssited that he help
or later supervise. The little add on BFO that I built still works
fine. Even though I think crystals were overkill. My uncle sent me a
matched as in 455 +/- 1.6KHz, or KC as the crystals are labeled. I
never thought of it until this morning but the BFO makes a fine IF
peaker! I lived for radio. Dad got the Knight kit after I figured out
that I could take a FM radio, tune it to a local station, and FM the LO
by adding AF to the AFC line. Worked very well. Maybe too well. I
covered the entire subdivision. Very stable as I was locked to a
commercial station. I can't remember now if the LO was 10.7MHZ above or
below the station I was tuned to. I suspect dad would have freaked if
he had known I fed the Knight to a 100' antenna. My friends and I
scoured he area looking for radio or TVs on the curb awaiting trash
pickup. I was the talk of school when I wrangled permission to take my
sacred radio to school. Although mom made me leave the tubes at home.
Bummer. In the grade
the order came down to clean out the shop. They allowed me to go
through
the "junk" before it went to the dump. I got a WWII trainer O'scope, a
simpson that dad and I fixed that he still uses. Several micrphones.
Lotsof neat stuff.
I had to call dad at work and explain the windfall and he took off a
couple of hours early to haul the stuff home. I have the complete set
of Popular Electroincs from oct 1954, 1st issue, until Aug 1978. I
sweet talked the
school system into letting me go to vocational school starting in the
10 grade.
Radio and TV repair. Now I had no intention of fixing trashed TVs for
the rest of my life, but I saw it as the frist step toward a real
future. I went to Votech fulltime for the summers and had to go a final
4 months to get my diploma.
Then I started college. I was very lucky with great parents and
teachers that,
while they didn't have a clue, knew it and gave me pretty free reign.
You might say I still have that love affair with radio. It is sad that
as the equipment has gotten better and cheaper, the available stations
to listen to
have decreased. My Zenith was a good radio in it's day, but compared to
even my Grundig FR200, pretty far down the good scale, blows it away.
But I will keep the Zentih and use it for special listening. Like my
birthday and the holidays. I am almost afraid of what my parents will
find as they continue to clean out their home. They are planning to
sell and move to a retirement home, so if it there they will find it.
Terry