For God's sake hide your astoishment.

Built an active, tunable antenna, and finally have something to seriously
play with. As I understand it, sunspot activity is only a notch or two
above the all-time recorded low, and I am still able to pick up some
stations off the whip, with only a little more noise than with the external
antenna. Radio Havana Cuba comes in like it's in my back pocket, which it
practically is, and the ubiquitous WWV comes in weakly, which doesn't
surprise me too much since I am inside a steel shell and sitting on the
floor. Wow. Feels sooo nice. And what's funny is, I can hear the clock on
the opposite side of the room ticking quietly in the background of weaker
stations. Not sure what to do next. May try adding another stage of
amplification to the front end. An NE602, maybe. The project that never
dies...

Dave

When the sunspots are really low, there are still radio things that can be
done. Disassemble the old solar powered calculator you got as a freebie and
use it to power a one transistor oscillator, using one of the many old odd
ball crystals you have in a drawer. Then put in a plastic box an hook a
piece of wire to it and place it outside. When the sun shines, the radio
will transmit. The more you have, the more signals you will hear. You can
place many around the neighborhood, if you are into dx.

Since the crystal will be affected by temperature, you can calibrate the
actual received frequency with outside temperature and impress your friends.

Colin K7FM

"COLIN LAMB" wrote in message
...
When the sunspots are really low, there are still radio things that can be
done. Disassemble the old solar powered calculator you got as a freebie
and use it to power a one transistor oscillator, using one of the many old
odd ball crystals you have in a drawer. Then put in a plastic box an hook
a piece of wire to it and place it outside. When the sun shines, the
radio will transmit. The more you have, the more signals you will hear.
You can place many around the neighborhood, if you are into dx.

Since the crystal will be affected by temperature, you can calibrate the
actual received frequency with outside temperature and impress your
friends.

Colin K7FM


Wow. Thanks for the ideas. Seriously though, I am taking advantage of the
lull to improve my project's sensitivity and selectivity. There are still
plenty of targets to aim at, and I have lots of work to do. I still pick up
BBC Africa and a couple of others regularly, and that is enough to keep me
quite busy. By the time sunspots pick up again, I hope to have this thing
working much harder.

Take it easy... 73 and good DX.

Dave