On my 8th birthday my parents bought me a 'waddingtons future scientist, radio electronics' activity set. They still come up occasionally on ebay and I still have mine nearly 60 years on.
The kit included a sort of base board with some components that you could connect together with wires that terminated into springs attached to each component. There were two resistors, two capacitors, a variable capacitor, ferrite rod and coil, germanium diode, germanium transistor. solar cell, audio transformer, morse key, battery holder and two crystal earpieces. There were instructions on how to make various crystal sets, transistor assisted crystal sets, audio amplifier, morse practice oscillator and the thing that captivated me was the 'home broadcasting station'
The instruction, once the activity set had been wired up was " To tune your radio to a blank spot on the dial, then adjust the variable capacitor until you hear the signal. It should be possible to tap or speak into the earpiece and hear it on the radio. I did and it was. Hey ho I was transmitting.. Not very far, the next room and out into the garden a few metres, but I discovered that if I wound the 'antenna' wire around any appliances mains cable the signal could be heard quite a way up the street while under the electricity poles. Far enough to get to my grans house, so she was entertained by my station which was essentially made up of me speaking into the crystal earpiece or placing it in front of my parents record player speaker.
Then some years later I discovered that the local oscillator of my FM transistor radio could be heard on another adjacent radio. Finding the sweet spots on the circuit board for an aerial and audio input was only a matter of time, as was getting hold of some avantek GPD amplifiers which boosted the power to about 200 mW, enough to start an FM pirate in the town of hadleigh suffolk. 200 mW is quite useable for a mile or two across town. My colleague who is now a presenter on Radio Caroline was also involved. For his part, he was much more interested in the programming and audio side & for my part, the idea of transmitting stuff from one place to somewhere many miles away has always been intriguing, so much so that my career was in Radio telecomms with a large telecomms provider. I still enjoy a foray into the ether on MW and FM & probably always will.
