Thinking back to my childhood past, my grandfather who is no longer with me, had given me on my 7th birthday a small box. Opening it, I had discovered that it was infact a kit of some sorts. And with the Radio Shack logo on the box, I knew it was good. Me and him sat down, and built the kit. It was then I had realized that had built my very own Crystal Radio. It wasn't much for looks, as it was only a piece of thick cardboard, a few parts, and an instructional manual, but it did what it was supposed to do. I got so much joy out of it, and my grandfather was ever so happy to see the look of joy when I had the radio tuned to Radio Disney AM 1450.

Now I am 24, and I had recently decided to re-visit that past. I had ordered a Crystal Radio kit from Omnitron Electronics Inc. I had put the set together, and before I knew it, I had once again revisted my past when I could hear the distinctive hiss and crackle of static in the earpiece. Though I currently don't recieve any signals due to a poor antenna setup, I moved the circuit from a piece of plastic that looked like a slice of cheese, to a much larger thick cardboard box with more room to work. I also wanted to share with you all the pictures that I had taken of the set using my PSP Logitec Eyetoy camera (sadly I don't have a decent webcam xD;)

The two pictures on top show the coil, diode, tuning knob, and the earpiece. The bottom left picture shows the underside of the radio with the simplest of wiring, as well as the tuning capacitor. And on the right is the schematic diagram of the whole setup. The sweetest thing about crystal radios is they require no power supply of any kind. They require no batteries, or a wall outlet. Instead, they are powerd by the one thing they recieve: radio signals. The signals are strong enough to be picked up and sent to the earpiece. Building this set has brought back so many joyful memories, that I thought I would share it with you all. I thank you all for viewing my work, and any comments, or suggestions are more than welcome. ^^