On Wed, 26 Feb 2014 13:56:34 -0500, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
On 2/26/2014 12:32 PM, gareth wrote:
"Jerry Stuckle" wrote:

I still like the simple electronics. However, simple receivers like that
just won't work for me now. Something about the 5KW AM transmitter in my
back yard...

The same for me 50 years ago. Home town was Portishead, and the TXs of
the international shipping Portiishead Radio were half a mile away across
the valley!

What 1/2 mile? I'm talking 50 yards (at the most) from my house to
their nearest tower.

My back yard (a pretty standard U.S. city lot from the 60's) directly
abuts their transmitter field. Their ground plane wires run right up to
the fence.

Sounds like a tuned antenna with a full-wave rectifier
could power some QRP projects there.....

73
Jonesy W3DHJ

"Alejandro Lieber" wrote in message
...
On 2014-02-18, gareth wrote:
There was a time, back inthe 1920s and 1930s, that any active device
(valves in them thar days, tubes for the leftpondians) would cost nearly
a week's wages for the average working man, and so it was good economical
sense to try and use it as many ways as possible simultaneously.
Times have changes, and active devices with performance into the tens
of MegaHertz are now ten-a-penny, so what is achieved by competitions
such as the "Two Transistor Challenge" where it is the costs of switching
(manual, relays) which would be the major outlay?
I remember my first home build radio: a earphone with just a 1N34 diode
in
parallel, an outdoor antenna and a good ground. Lots of listening hours of
a nearby AM 1230 KHz transmiter.
With a single FET regenerative receiver I could listen shorwave radios
from all over the world.
I like to work with very simple electronic equipment: I am reading and
replying to this news group with a 20 MHz 80286, 1 MBy memmory and all
programs in a 1.44
diskette (no Hard Drive).

Well done, that man!