Re: "The Works" Crystal Radio
As long as 15 years ago I tried, with all my past radio experience at my disposal, to get a 'toy' crystal set - 'John Adams' in that case, with a fixed tuning coil and variable capacitor and germanium diode and crystal earpiece - to work with a very long wire and a good earth, and still failed. That was in East Sussex.
The only thing I didn't try was a bias battery to nudge the diode up to the 'almost on' point, as I felt that the whole point of a crystal set was that it should miraculously work without any integral power.
Back in my teens I had no difficulty getting home made crystal sets working here on urban Tyneside, the main difficulty being that the set tended to receive more than one station at a time.
|