Loudspeaking Crystal Radio

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When I was about 10 years old I wired a diode of unknown parameters in series with a small speaker. One end of this pair was connected to the house plumbing which was all copper and well grounded. The other end went out the window and about 30 feet to the metal swing set in the back yard which was also fairly well grounded.

Classical music flowed freely and was loud enough to be heard in the next room. There were no tuned circuits or impedance matching, but there was a 5KW AM broadcasting station 3 blocks from the house. WVGC operated on 1.07 MHz. Sometime in the mid 60's WVCG upped it's power to 50KW, moved up 10KHz, but more importantly for me, moved the transmitter out of our neighborhood. An apartment building took it's place.

This swing set "loop antenna" sucked in all sorts of shortwave signals on my old Hallicrafters S-38, but looking back caused some serious front end overload since WVCG could be heard in multiple spots on the dial in every band.

The diode and speaker were obtained from my favorite parts department, the local trash landfill. I would visit nearly weekly for tubes, transformers, and all sorts of electronics parts, obtained from discarded TV's HiFi's and radios.
 
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