Sparking the Flame – Origins of My Interest in Radio
It all began back in the very early 1970s, just sitting listening to the radio on Sunday afternoons, on my uncle’s “radiogram” (probably better known as a “console” in the US). It didn’t seem to matter much what I was listening to, though I do recall a particular fascination when my uncle would tune the thing past the end of the marked scale and picked up “other broadcasts”.
My interest was spurred further when, shortly thereafter, a red “Roberts Radio” (an RT22, I believe), found its way into our home. This could pick up signals on more bands, and I kept sneaking it to bed at night to listen to. This didn’t endear me to my parents very much, as every time they went to use it, the batteries were dead.
My parent’s solution to this, was to give me a copy of a “Lady Bird” book called “Making a Transistor Radio”.
This beautifully hand-illustrated, and easy to follow, little book guides you through a series of radio builds, beginning with a very basic crystal set and culminating with a simple transistor radio. I must have read the thing cover to cover at least a dozen times, while gradually accumulating the required parts over span of a few weeks (pocket money only goes so far, and the local “electronics” store had to order the parts every time).
Assembly was via a layout of wood screws and brass countersunk washers on a literal wooden “bread board”, under which you trapped the various wires and component leads, to make the circuit.
To this day, I remember getting the crystal radio working the first time. I will never forget how much that depended on getting both the ground and the antenna just right – which are good lessons for today as a new ham. And that’s a long time ago; I was five or six years old when I built this – and without much in the way of parental assistance.
I did eventually go on to finish the transistor set that was the ultimate goal of the book. It was a little bulky to use the way I had the family radio, but the fact I’d put it together myself made it special. It was not far from there that I wound up getting a small, pre-built, transistor radio as a gift – and that was much easier and more convenient to use.
The following year, a friend of mine was given a “Thomas Salter” electronics kit at the start of our summer holiday. This comprised a bunch of basic electronic components, laid out on a panel, with numbered spring contacts that you bent over, and pushed the end of a color-coded wire (the color indicated the length) into, to hook things up. Instructions were simple; they told you, one connection at a time, what color wire to connect between which two numbered springs.
I do not recall the actual version of “number” of the kit, as they were sold as several different “levels”, but there were a good number of circuits/experiments you could make with it. Those included adjustable audible oscilators, a transistor AM radio receiver, and most fascinating of all for me, at the time … a simple AM radio transmitter; use of which was, I’m sure, quite illegal, but that wasn’t much of a concern to a six or seven year old at the time. Copious fun was had hearing our own voices on the radio in the next room, which was about all the range it had.
Electronics became my primary hobby, even as a seven year old, temporarily displacing Lego as my favorite thing to play with, and my fascination with radio – while diminished somewhat in my childhood with the advent of home computers and electronic games – has never gone away.