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What Stations Could You Hear On Your First Crystal Radio?

S

Schroedingers Cat

What stations could you hear on your first simple crystal radio? Start with the strongest. My first crystal radio was a Hearever Rocket Radio. If there were daytimers and large Day/Night facility changes, specify Day and Night.

WKMF (now WFNT) 1470
WFDF (now 50 kW 60 miles further South) 910
WTRX 1330

Others could be heard on certain antennas, but not consistently. Obviously, with more LCs and longer antennas coupled to it, you could hear more stations.
 
WCFL. I was about nine years old. And at the time I lived about 6 miles from their stick(s). It was one of those Rocket Radios.
 
During the day, mine could separate the local (Bloomington IN) WTTS 1370 from Indy's WIBC 1070. Just barely. At night, it was WTTS and WWL 870 New Orleans, and that was usually it.

This was circa 1968-69.
 
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In Calgary, it was CHQR (then on 810) CFAC 960, CBR 1010, CFCN 1060 and CKXL 1140. It didn't tune higher than 1200, and even then it would not have been able to pick up 1280 CHRB. It couldn't even get local CKDQ 910.
 
My first "crystal set" was one of the projects on a Radio Shack 200-in-1 project kit. (Actually it was the one with the 1 transistor audio amplifier, so not a true crystal set as it used 6 1.5V batteries.) For an antenna, I used the 6 foot or so wire that was supplied with the kit. On a good day, I could just BARELY receive a trace of 1170 KCBQ, which was about 6 miles away from me at the time and blasted me with about 300+ kW. Another time, when I hooked up a bigger antenna, or inductively coupled it to a powerline (I forget which) - basically adding amplification without adding selectivity, KCBQ came up in strength well enough to listen to (on headphones). Selectivity was poor enough (as on all crystal sets - to me, anything with more than a single very-low-Q tuned stage is no longer a crystal set) so that when a signal is strong enough to listen to, it is audible across the entire band.
 
My first (and only) wired crystal set got one station -- WCBS 880. They were the closest 50K omni to the house. I never even got WNBC 660, though, which was on the same tower.

Now I never really quite learned which end of a hot soldering iron to hold. And I never thought that something called a 'heat sink' should make any difference, either. And my soldering 'work' looked more like subway graffiti than it did a project board.

After reading a few of these posts, though, I see I'm not alone in exasperation, hi.

* * * * * * *

My favorite (and safest) off-beat experimental approach with decidedly substandard radios was to take the usual-issue 6 transistor radio, sit it in the X junction of the loop antenna, and turn the variable capacitor. One morning, daylight, WELV 1370 Ellenville NY (Catskills) came into the DX den that way. No more soldering for me. Yet, it * is * somewhat cool to know that I'm in the playoff race for lousiest crystal radio design.
 
My Rocket Radio didn't want to tune down to the lower end of the AM band either. If a station was strong enough and there were not a lot of other low dial stations, you could hear a few. How far were you from WCBS, Steve?

There's a schematic for the Rocket Radio online, and if I knew then what I know now, I would have put some sort of switchable capacitance on it to extend it down there when I wanted to hear something low dial.
 
Mine was in the late 60's when I was a kid.

THE station on my crystal set was 1210 WCAU. (Now WPHT)

Their transmitter was only a couple miles away. WCAU even could be heard faintly on one of my record players.

And I remember taking my crystal radio whenever we visited relatives up in Hasbrouck Heights.

You could see WABC's tower looking down the street and it's needless to say how that would come in.

WABC could also be heard in the background on their phone line.
 
in Louisville around 1962-1963...received ONLY daytimer WLOU running 5kw daytime ND on 1350:
their TL less than 2 miles due north

nightime not much...local WHAS occasionally...remember KMOX one time late-night (or late for a 10 year old)

had a wire antenna running east-west...about 10 feet high...about 50 feet long IIRC
 
Probably what was my first outdoor antenna was a wire running from my window to a downspout about 20 feet away. It worked OK with the Rocket Radio in the daytime, but when the local stations dropped power at sunset, all I could get was Shortwave jamming signals. Those sounded like the interior of an airplane or the interior of a factory with heavy machinery operating. This was probably around 1961.
 
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As the cow flies, Schroed, I was about 6-7 miles south of WCBS's 880 tower.

* * * * * *

On the neophyte transmitting side -- if I'm not too far straying from the OP's topic -- we always loved getting those Lafayette AM transmitters and putting them on the air. The directions said that a ten-foot wire was the legal limit, per FCC, part 87.54subC, CFR, part 15, in triplicate, copy to Pentagon and the NSA.
Our station had three resonant coils, which looked like 45 record racks. And out antenna was a bit longer than ten feet.
About 260 feet longer. Wow, what a directional signal we got!

It's still fun putting on the air one of those old Ramsey FM transmitters (no longer available) and using a Radio Shack 90-mile TV antenna as the aerial. For a half an hour or so we can drive around the mall on the next hill, eat pretzels, drink beer, DX, and have our snots and giggles.

* * * * * * *

Breaker nine-teen ..... Are there still any people on the CB radio band ? How boutcha, buddy?
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
As the cow flies, Schroed, I was about 6-7 miles south of WCBS's 880 tower.

* * * * * *

On the neophyte transmitting side -- if I'm not too far straying from the OP's topic -- we always loved getting those Lafayette AM transmitters and putting them on the air. The directions said that a ten-foot wire was the legal limit, per FCC, part 87.54subC, CFR, part 15, in triplicate, copy to Pentagon and the NSA.
Our station had three resonant coils, which looked like 45 record racks. And out antenna was a bit longer than ten feet.
About 260 feet longer. Wow, what a directional signal we got!

It's still fun putting on the air one of those old Ramsey FM transmitters (no longer available) and using a Radio Shack 90-mile TV antenna as the aerial. For a half an hour or so we can drive around the mall on the next hill, eat pretzels, drink beer, DX, and have our snots and giggles.

* * * * * * *

Breaker nine-teen ..... Are there still any people on the CB radio band ? How boutcha, buddy?
Click to expand...

I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one with one of those Part 15 transmitters. Mine was from Allied Radio in the Chicago area. My antenna length was probably about the same length as yours. Got out about 3 or 4 blocks in the early 60s.
 
KCRG 1600, now called KGYM, a local station, was the only one I could pick up on my crystal radio. (I might add that I heard that station recently at night in northern Wisconsin, consistently and coming in pretty strong.
 
I was initially confused by the title of this thread because a "crystal set" is something that old people used to talk about playing with in the 1920s, much to our amazement and awe. I was pretty sure that someone who did that would not be represented in great number on an internet message board. Did I somehow miss an entire resurgence, complete with cat whisker and all?
 
This is a thread about DXing. DXers talk about esoteric things like crystal radios. For people born right after WWII and for another 20 years or so, often the first radio we owned was a crystal radio, and the first transmitter we owned was a Part 15 transmitter. There's quite a few of the people on this board who fall into that demographic. Its what they call the baby boomers. Many of us had a Hearever Rocket Radio, or something we built that was similar. A one transistor radio was often the next step.

I inherited a cat's whisker, but I've never been able to get it to work. A 1N34 Germanium diode works better, at least if you don't get a bad one. Silicon diodes require a much stronger signal.

Now here's a challenge. Come up with a circuit that uses the power from a nearby radio station to make a power supply to provide DC bias to a diode to increase sensitivity. Is that still a crystal radio? Tom Kneitel had a circuit called an "Electricity Stealer" that might be adapted for it.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
This is a thread about DXing. DXers talk about esoteric things like crystal radios. For people born right after WWII and for another 20 years or so, often the first radio we owned was a crystal radio, and the first transmitter we owned was a Part 15 transmitter. There's quite a few of the people on this board who fall into that demographic. Its what they call the baby boomers. Many of us had a Hearever Rocket Radio, or something we built that was similar. A one transistor radio was often the next step.

I inherited a cat's whisker, but I've never been able to get it to work. A 1N34 Germanium diode works better, at least if you don't get a bad one. Silicon diodes require a much stronger signal.

Now here's a challenge. Come up with a circuit that uses the power from a nearby radio station to make a power supply to provide DC bias to a diode to increase sensitivity. Is that still a crystal radio? Tom Kneitel had a circuit called an "Electricity Stealer" that might be adapted for it.
Click to expand...

My wife had a Rocket Radio but I never did. My first radio was a Columbia portable transistor type. It never occurred to me that kids had any other kind.
 
My dad grew up in the 1930s in Central Ohio, Portsmouth and Chilicothe, and got 700 WLW Cincinnati on his crystal radio. I wonder if WLW was 500,000 watts then, or was he simply picking up the nearest non-directional 50,000 watt station? (Wikipedia says WLW was half-a-million watts from 1934 to 1939. But other stations complained about the interference and competitive disadvantage so WLW had to give up the superpower.)

I grew up so close to 770 WABC's 50 kw tower in Lodi NJ that I could see the top of the tower from our living room window. I didn't have a crystal set. But if you grounded a tape recorder, you got WABC. If you picked up a pay phone without putting in the quarter, you heard WABC. If a friend bought a walkie-talkie set, you heard WABC in the background. So I assume that's what I would have gotten if I had a crystal set as a kid.
 
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