My experiments with hooking up a Radio receiver-The 'THRILL'.




The year.... 1964 or 1965.
City - Jodhpur
I was a student of Electrical Engineering ( 1st/2nd Year). Jodhpur had just got its first own Akashvani low power Radio Transmitter.It had a limited range, just covering the Jodhpur City. We Jodhpur'ians were very excited, treating it as an endorsement to the growing importance of our city. There was a general craze amongst our classmates to hook up a local receiver set to catch this transmission. Not to be left behind, I also bought a few components-a crystal oscillator, a diode, a coil, a variable capacitor and a head phone.
It looked almost magical that a motley set of components, when hooked together, could bring the sound into the head phone.  With great alacrity I connected the components.  Nothing happened. Checked the connections, tried changing the polarities, still nothing. Got frustrated and left it.
Tried it again in the afternoon. 
Same fate.
Tried it again in the evening....Heard some crackling noises in the head phone. My heart started beating faster. Turned the knob on variable capacitor and low and behold, got to listen to a film song of Lata Mangeshkar with chorus. It just sounded unbelievable. Literally out of the thin air these set of components were successful to extract music, a THRILL- memory of which will remain with me forever!!!
 

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 1, 2016 at 8:32 AM

    Thanks Nagraj for sharing your experience. In fact my love for electronics started when I was in IX class. My elder cousin brother, who was in Jaipur had assembled a crystal receiver with headphones. Later on I added two transistors connected in a way, which was not there in any text book and added speaker to this. I had asembled many such sets and gave it to many of batchmates. I was so fond of music that many of friends in hostel started telling me, that I should start reading else I will fail in exams. Anyway, I told them that this is my way of reading and it is sufficient for me. In college project, I had made SW radio transmitter and when it really worked, all of us very happy and Dr. Surana too was also too enthusiastic.

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