The Electronic, Radio and Digital Toys from the 60s and 70s may have had a big influence on your Career and Hobby Path. Were you a radio shack or Lafayette kid?
Memories... I used to have the Radio Shack Archer Space Patrol Walkie Talkies. Channel 14. I ran a long wire and connected it to the whip. I used to be able to talk to my friends who lived in the next neighborhood. I also had a Rocket Radio (Crystal Radio) It had a rod that would extend and that would tune in the different stations. Those toys along with an older Brother who was into Electronics got me into Electronics and I have loved it every since. Later the Ham Radio Novice came along , High School Electronics Vocational Program. To a break for a few years to learn what I didn't want to do in life. Went to a local College and did well. Ended up doing Test and Measurement work for an FCC program within Digital Equipment Corporation for 17 years then went with EMC Corporation and retired there.
@@MIKROWAVE1 In my neighbor hood there was a group of CBer's who used channel 14. We drove them crazy but were could we go we only had a single channel walkie. It was a lot of fun and it waa all magic.
Those toys propelled me into an electronics's career, ham radio and a general fascination for science and technology. At 67 I'm still building stuff, buying parts and trying new stuff.
What a memories! I remember, when I was 13, in the middle 60's, I got as Christmas present the kit Electronic Engineer, by PHILIPS. It was my entrance in the imaging electronic world. 😊
I have a recollection of tiny three legged rubber underpants that fitted on the transistor to help stop the legs breaking off. I can't remember if they came with the Philips kit or perhaps a give away from Practical Electronics or maybe later at College to protect their precious stock. 73 Steve
@@m0kov as far as I remember, there were no any kind of protection for the transistor's lead included in the kit. It was, really, a problem. I remember I was using the plastic cover from wires to solve that and protect somehow the transistors. (AC126 if I remember well... 🤔😄 ) 73s, Vassilis.
This sure brings back great memories! The Radio Shack 150 in 1 Electronic Project Kit, Science Fair crystal radio kit, Sears walkie talkies, Bearcat IV Electra scanner, GE 10 Band radio receiver, and a CB plastic base station with morse key all played an important role in my childhood and my love of electronics!
My brother was born in ‘51 and I was born in ‘49. My father was a chemical engineer (Purdue University ‘49). By the mid-50s my brother and I enjoyed Christmas and birthday hauls that included HeathKit crystal and tube radio kits, chemistry sets, erector set, Mattel science kits, All About books, etc. Both of us received BS in Physics .
Yes. Starting with an AA5 radio that I tore apart, and put on a wooden board so I could see the tubes. Then in 1970 or so, I was traveling with my dad, and we stopped at a warehouse in Yakima Washington, and I saw a Zenith upright radio that the warehouse guys used to listen to ball games. I asked about it and they said I could have it!!!! That is where the shortwave listening started! That led to getting a Radio Shack 65 in 1 kit, crystal sets, Radio Shack one tube radio etc.... I built all of the projects and they worked! In 1975, I got my ham license while in jr high. I checked out all of the Boys First (and the Second, and the Third and the Forth) Book I've been active every day of my ham career. That lead to meeting other hams in in Spokane Washington, and I met a guy that worked at the local Motorola Service Shop. He said they were looking for a radio installer. I applied (by talking to the shop owner) (this was in 1979). I still lived at home and worked for the cable company which was a job, but not fun working outside in the -22 degree weather. I told the shop owner I would work for free for a few days. He liked that idea, and I went out with one of the teks the next day. I was pretty skinny in those days and had been under lots of houses to run cable TV wiring. I was easy for me and I understood exactly what they were doing. We we got back to the shop, the tek I was with told the shop owner, "hire him". That was the day it all started a 42 1/2 year career in the 2-way radio industry. I bought the Motorola shop with a couple of other folks that worked there. We closed the shop in 1999 and I went right to work at Motorola. Retired at 62 in 2021 with a pension and social security and lots of $$ in 401Ks. Living large with no payments except for food, utilities and car maintenance and gas. I'm (my wife and I) are living happily ever-after.
Growing up in Michigan in the 60s and 70s I had the Delux Heathkit breadboard kit (which I still have). I had many enjoyable hours building the many circuits from the CPO to a 3 transistor Broadcast Band receiver. Later I had a couple of the Science Fair kits from RS. I sent me on my way to University for a BSEE degree. Thanks for bringing back the memories.
I bought one of those Archer Space Patrol base stations in the early 70's. I remember it was almost $30. The Radio Shack was just a block from my house. I had to call my dad at work to get his OK to buy it as it was from my earnings. My friend carried the batteries and I carried the radio home. Finally got my ham ticket in 1984. I also got a 100 in one Science Fair kit for Christmas one year. I had the one tube AM P-Box kit also.
In 1958 I had an Erectronic kit that used jiffy connectors to be assembled onto a perf board with various templates to show and explain the circuit. It had a 1T4 vacuum tube and also a germanium diode for basics. It was powered by a 45 volt B battery and a 1.5 volt A cell. I actually found the kit at a flea market several years ago! It still had its original parts! Fast forward to 1985 after attending night school for basic electronics and digital training, I spent 16 years in the field.
Mine was a Philips, which did intercom, morse code, radio and a few others. This expanded my knowledge in electronics, my jobs included television repairs, marine radio communication equipment repairs and lastly Marconi instruments UK. Thanks for bringing back happy memories.
My Dad and I built a Radio Shack P-box code oscillator together in the early 1970's. He gave me a clapped out Halacrafters S-40 and check book register to use as a log. My grandparents bought me a transistor radio for Christmas 1970; I spent many nights listening to Mystery Theater with the radio under my pillow. And, I was into crystal radios, fortunately we lived across the mississippi river from WCCO's 50K watt transmitter. My wife and kids got me the radio shack crystal radio Christmas 1993. It still sits on my radio shack desk running 24/7/365! and, I sent signal reports to San Francisco and Wainwright, Alberta with that set -ha. Thanks for the great video! AA0QZ
I had that exact kit (150 in One) and played with it for hours and hours on end after school home alone till dinner. It shaped my life more than I knew now that I look back. I was never afraid to take something apart and fix it and still not. I'm an IT Directory now with 31 years in IT and still tinker at home with electroincs, 3D printers, PI, Arduino's, just about anything that has electric running in it. Can't stop learning!
😃 As a ham, still playing with the radio toys... Yes, had a few electronic toys as a kid and my father who worked in electronics provided encouragement. Can't really remember a time when I was not interested in radio and electronics. Went on to have a career as an Engineer.
Steve, this happened to a lot of us, but frankly, my dad almost electrocuted me! He was not electrical. I was adopted and recently found my birth father's side with electrical going back to the 1910 census.
My fathers career was mostly electrical, although he didn't have a voluntary start. On been enlisted into the army at the start of ww2 the recruiting officer told him that they needed signalmen. When asked if he knew Ohms law, my father replied, I've heard of it. Right then lad you're in. Steve M0KOV
👍 As children we built our own medium wave transmitters with coils wound on toilet grooves and later FM transmitters with the ECC85 and El95 on self-bent aluminum chassis. That was definitely the start of my professional future as a physicist. There were no such convenient kits in my day.
I spent 33 years of my life as a Avionics Technician. No doubt that was a result of an interest in electronics because of my Dad. My dad was involved in radio and TV repair most of his life so I guess I picked it up from him. Growing up I always had an old tube SW receiver in my bed room and listened to them a lot. At 13 I built a regenerative receiver from a magazine article, and a tremolo circuit for my guitar amp. I also remember also having one of those electronic project kits that allowed you to build several circuits including an AM radio and intercom. I don't remember who manufactured it though. My Dad was never a Ham though he listed to SW all the time. I didn't catch the Ham bug until I was 23 yrs old and I built a ton of Heathkit equipment.
I became an electronic engineer because of 3 reasons. I grew up in Detroit, my Sunday school teacher taught us boys after church all about radios, crystal sets, everthing about electronics, colour codes of resisters and ham radio. The kits or toys we bought were fun and educational. In high school we built tesla coils and our final exam was to build a multiple pole motor and it had to run for 2 minutes. I subscribed to popular electronics. Our boy scout troop build radios from army surplus. We all learned about 11 year sun spot cycles, skip, solar flairs, and had contests to see how many qsl cards we had from listening to short wave. I build many heath kits. Education and helping boys become men and having mentors does not exist anymore. I was born in 1941. I bought my first transistor, a ck21 pnp in 1956
Got Shortwave Receiver age 9 about 1962, always loved electronics and later computers which led to formal education in electronics and eventually computer networking. Also Amateur Radio ; ) I am retired and still interested ; ) Thank You.
My childhood and teen years just flashed before me! In 1970s Australia we had Dick Smith Electronics and Tandy Electronics (Radio Shack) leading up the radio and electronics hobby market, so many similarities..
I had the 20-in-1 kit, which was a little different. Each component was on a separate little plastic base, and you could move them around to arrange your circuit. It still had the springs, but the connections were made between them with little metal bars. I remember connecting the solar cell to the audio transformer to "boost the voltage", and being confused when it didn't work. A few years later in 6th grade, my dad bought me a Heathkit digital alarm clock to build. It still works and keeps perfect time in my office 40 years later.
By the time I was born, Lafayette didn't exist. I had a Radio Shack 160 in 1, but that was it. I was the kid buying the floor sweeping capacitor and transistor packs from the back of the store.
And POLY-PACKS, in the back of Byte? Meshna. Jerryco. Edmund Scientific. Olsen. B&F. Digi-Key was only a four-page flyer. During college I drove to Boston for a science fiction convention, went out to Poly Packs, but they were closed on sunday. And all their windows were covered with brown paper, so I couldn't even look inside.
Another wonderful video, prompting memories of childhood and the fascinating world of radio and electronics that so fascinated us then and still does today. Thank you.
YYYESSS!!! I still have that same 150-In-1 Radio Shack kit from when I was about 10 years old in about 1976 (my father gave it to me for my birthday that year, or a year close to it), as well as several others RS and similar kits, and everything, including the accompanying books, is still in MINT CONDITION! My father was an electronics technician in the Navy (“Fire Control Technician”) on Navy Destroyers in the 1950s and 1960s, and then went to work on Polaris missiles, Westinghouse, and beyond to some other electronics firms after that. He would bring me home components and parts from work and would teach me how to build simple little circuits with CARDBOARD BOXES being my project boxes, and this was when I was a LITTLE KID, in single digit years! I would also “help” (watch) my father fix TVs and such and I learned a lot back then, and used to enjoy going to town to the drug store to test and buy tubes with the big tube testers in the store. These were GREAT times, and then Radio Shack started coming out with these kits, and everything really shifted into high gear! I eventually took some correspondence courses with the Cleveland Institute Of Electronics in the 80s and 90s, and wound up working in I.T. and also teaching it (and music and P.E.) at a couple local colleges simultaneously... I.T. and doing everything at board level and not at the component level anymore kind of knocked me out of electronics for a while (except audio and music electronics), so I am again, decades later, sort of relearning a lot of this stuff, and rediscovering it all anew again, and having a blast… Thanks for this video, and all your others! 😊😊😊
Gen-Xer borrn in 77 and, yes, electronic toys got me where I am. Your video covered several beginnings for me - playing with walkie-talkies with a friend, my dad introducing me to shortwave radio, and later getting a Science Fair 130-in-1 electronics lab. Got into guitar as a teen which lead me to building my own fuzz and overdrive boxes. Became obsessed with vintage computers in my early 20's, analogue synths in my mid-20's, then valve regens and ham radio in my early 30's. Now in my mid 40's and am absolutely overwhelmed by electronics and the hobby has practically become my life.
i had the cardboard 60-in-one, wood/cardboard 150-in-one like you showed, and the plastic breadboard 300-in-one with all the logic IC's. I learned on my own, none of my family or friends cared about electronics. got my ham license when i was 13, took 3 times cause i kept failing the code test, but i eventually got my ticket!"
At 17:16 - P-Box Kits! Oh, my gosh, I built the 3-Transistor Shortwave Receiver kit when I was about 12! My grandmother stayed with us while my parents worked. So, I snuck the ladder out of the garage and climbed up on the ROOF to tack down the little wire antenna. I can't remember if it came with the radio or was purchased separately but it had little plastic dog-bone ends. I never told anyone about doing that, but I left it up there the next year when we moved. I remember clearly receiving French and Russian programs with that thing in the evenings. Looking it up - I got lucky, that was just around the middle of Solar Cycle 20 which was an active cycle. Tie that with taking apart every broken appliance and radio (and sometimes even fixing it!) - I had a 43-year career in software and computers as well as an electronics hobby.
I had the 10 in one kit at 19:19. Wow I totally forgot about that until today. I remember the 150 in 1 kits, but that was moving up in the world! Burt probably remembers his first soup cans and string phone. I had a buddy of mine who was an engineer for Bell Labs ( Lucent Technologies) and he could afford any radio he wanted, yet his favorite thing to do was making crystal receivers with Tinker Toys, old magnet wire and hot glue. It's funny how some of the most brilliant minds I've known favor the simplest technology and really enjoy it the best. It shows true appreciation for the field (pun intended) of electronics. Thanks Mike for another trip down memory lane!
@@MIKROWAVE1 I played with electricity as a child. I had one of those electric bell kits that used a single D cell. Well, I though it would be cool to plug it into the wall outlet. At least it was a switched outlet! PUFF (not pf).
Growing up in the 90's, I had the Radio Shack 100- (150?) in-one and later 300-in-one kits. I sure learned a lot! I remember surprising my parents at the dinner table by asking for another germanium diode. I eventually got the Radio Shack crystal radio kit and still have it! I also had the AM/FM and shortwave receiver kits. Who else here ripped all the components out of their xx-in-one kits?
I had the 150-in-one kit in the mid 80's and used it all the time, but over time I used hook-up wire for other things and the transistor/s burnt out or failed and I did take parts out of it. Sadly I no longer have it and I also remember having that organ that someone gave me.
In while in high school, I built a voice synthesizer, then in the Navy in spare time I built a Theremin, another code oscillator. When young it was experimental breaking and fixing things. I did electronics/motor controls for work and CB/ham radio for play.
@@MIKROWAVE1 I will look for it, I have been interested in this side of science since that crystal radio that I found at an estate auction at the age of 10, thanks for what you do here.
I fondly remember when I was around 10 years old getting a Thames and Cosmos 12AU7 regen for Christmas from my folks. I spent countless hours (and countless AA batteries) in my room at 2am listening to far off shortwave broadcasts. Wish I still had it. Like almost all of my toys it eventually ended up being taken apart, which looking back is kinda silly because there wasn't anything hidden that couldn't be gleamed from turning the radio upside down. Oh well. Thanks Mom and Dad.
I was interested in electronics at age 5, show & tell my collection of TV parts. Got a Heathkit Workshop 35 that at 9, I made all my friends help me put the projects together. First soldering iron at 11. Went to Community College and flunked out of Oregon State. I'm now a micro-controller/FPGA HW/SW engineer in the medical EEG industry.
Mike, you really triggered an awful lot of memories with this video to say the least. For me, interest in electrical/electronics started at 3-4 years of age, in the '50s our uncle gave my brothers this very old 4 tube radio that they tore apart, I was totally fascinated. I had all kinds of questions how things worked, see my dad had this Zenith tombstone radio that was our door to AM & SW listening, My nephew has that radio to this day. 2nd grade, I begged my parents to buy me an electric train set, I learned a lot about electricity from that. In 7th grade we got the Lafayette Catalog and some of the first things I bought was their 6 transistor radio, Ge transistors, and a selenium solar cell. The solar cell came with a book that showed how to build a crystal set and a one transistor solar powered radio, still have those items. The love for electronics grew from then on, self taught mostly!
@@MIKROWAVE1 Yes Mike, there is a lot more to my story, too much to tell it all on here. Looking back I believe I was a prodigy, like it was easy for me to learn on my own.
I started very young. Investigating old radios.. I was building crystal sets by 10 and regen radios by 12. Tech school right out of HS, and several factory jobs for a few years. After encouragement from my then sister in law I looked at positions at a major Ivy League university. Got hired designing and building custom laboratory research equipment. 35+ years later I retired at age 60. Electronics has been a hobby as well as a career for most of my life. I'm still a ham radio operator. It was a good match for me.
While living in Elmira NY, I had a no-name "20 in one" kit, non radioshack. It had a pre-built audio amplifier. I used that for way more than just twenty projects. Lost that in the flood, as well as many issues of Popular Electronics bought secretly with lunch-money. But I also got about ten flood-damaged TV sets, a 5-tube table radio, a geiger counter, a shortwave. Hose off the mud, dry for weeks. (But I'd already become an electronics fanatic by then.) I converted the table-radio into an audio amp. I used the geiger counter HV supply to drive a TV flyback, for a tiny Tesla Coil, with a nail as the main terminal, made half-inch corona discharge. When I went to college at U of Rochester, one of the TV sets became my first computer terminal on Altair-type 8080 kit-computer (1977,) after I built a keyboard from scratch.
@@MIKROWAVE1 A great secret of experimental physics is that you can vent a color television tube, then carefully scribe/shatter the rear half, and clean up the screen. It's a window made of thick lead-glass. Try to buy a similar window for x-ray shielding, expect $500 or more. (The late model Sonys with the ultra-flat screen are even better. Go buy 'em at the city dump (I mean recycling station.) )
Hi Mike. In the sixties I built a "ground wave" station utilising an old tube radio (AF stages only) and a speaker transformer and double pole throw switch (to switch for receive and transmit) connected to two ground rods and communicated with a friend about a quarter of a mile away on his similar system. This system was tried out in the armed forces including submarines. It was from an article in Practical Wireless in May 1964 and February 1965... Just in case you were interested to check it out... 73s
Brings back old forgotten Christmas gift Memories !! ...Some time late '50's (65 yrs ago) Received That genuine "Remco" labeled "Transistor Radio & home Broadcaster" kit for Christmas...After a very Difficult assembly Effort the Transistor radio tuned very Broadly & not very Sensitive....The home "Broadcast" wasn't RF or transistorized but simply a Carbon element microphone wired thru batteries to a 4" speaker.... Remember feeling kinda confusingly Disappointed as a kid...By June, I was stripping it down & using for parts of my own Diy radios...Ended up wiring the Carbon mic in series with a 6 volt auto ignition Coil & really RF "Broadcasting" a rough & crude (But intelligible) voice Modulated spark Transmitter !! ....Pretty cool as a kid diy salvaging the parts & making it a Real radio Broadcaster !! .....Back in my early Struggling kid (But stubbornly persistent) days & No one in family radio or electronics knowledgeable to help...
Nice video, Mike - now wait while I watch it again at slower speed. Here in 1970s UK, I was lucky enough to have the Philips EE1003 "Electronic Engineer" kit, plus (year on year) the two expander kits. I still have them. I must clean off the corrosion, replace the broken components and build something to show off on UA-cam!
Mike, nice trip down memory lane. I had the Sears Base Station at 15:43. We had an army of kids in our neighborhood all on channel-14. And since I had the base, I was the commander--HiHi! Also built the Psycho-Lite from kit; however it always put a buzz back into the stereo/audio source due to switching noise. Built the famous Quaker-Oats electric motor with an electromagnet and paper-clips that lined the lid; got my Electricity Merit Badge. Had the P-Box One Tube Radio, wasn't the greatest but wish I still had it with what I know now; but did Radio Merit Badge. Also built the P-Box Electronic Organ Kit; got my Electronics Merit Badge. Had the Radio Patrolman receiver that was VFO tuned; you could listen to anything on VHF! Got a 5" Sears reel-to-reel tape recorder in 1965; recorded George Carlin's first appearance as the Hippie-Dippie Weatherman on the Jimmy Dean show! Finally something you didn't mention, was electric trains; I got a Sears electric train when I was about 8; learned more about electricity keeping it running!
American Science & Surplus (web, and Midwest USA) stores still sell these inexpensive ELECTRONIC KITS. I had the REMCO KIT in '64 and later a CB base with key. Led to my Novice in '67. Great fun.
I was born in 1986 and played with my brother's "Elektronika" experiment set made in the USSR in the '70s/80s, it was a lot of fun to experiment and even though I didn't understand the instructions in Russian, I could still build circuits from schematics, and it was when I was a wee kid in the ground school. It had parts like transistors, small scale integration ICs (a bunch of transistors in a package), RC, diodes, transformers, LDR, LED, relay, a speaker and maybe some other parts. Later on I moved on to taking old devices apart and building circuits dead bug style, building kits, making boards and devices. I ultimately got interested in audio, tube electronics and vintage stuff. Even though I studied chemistry and got a master's degree in it, electronics and computer stuff stuck with me, and now I'm running my own shop/lab and UA-cam channel. Still gotta learn, pass the exams and get a licence.
There is a lot of curiosity on the eastern block electronics toys, kits, and trainers. I recently friended a former Soviet EE who gave me some eastern semiconductors, parts, and tubes to play with. He has that solid first principles and theoretical foundation that I only ever saw in the MIT educated folks I worked with in various companies.
@@MIKROWAVE1 the differences in education between the West and the Eastern Bloc are interesting; it seems to me (I may be wrong here) that at least here in Poland the EE studies are big on math, theory and fundamentals - but not necessarily project work or practical skills like soldering etc. I studied EE for half a year and dropped out because I didn't really get calculus or physics, and because I noticed I wouldn't learn what interested me most at the time i.e. vacuum tube technology.
My Remco was red. They used ‘piano wire’ in the thing… can’t count the times the uncooperative wire ‘stabbed me’ while trying to bent it around screws in the housing. Junk. But… I was ‘on the air’ and hooked! Also, my Allied Radio Knight Kit 21-in-1 Transistor Lab had the ‘Wireless Broadcaster’. The bomb! 12 years old and my neighborhood has a new radio station… ME! Post high school I entered the broadcasting industry as a (paid!! 😂) DJ. Did that for about 10 years. A fun filled misstep in terms of a career. Following that, I masqueraded as an un-degreed electronics technician. Never have had a career, come to think of it. 😊The End.
Well its hard to figure how they came up with that wire, but you have to admit - it was kid resistant. It was not resistant to my plastic melter woodburning kit!
I vaguely remember the springs on the Radio Shack kits -- I also remember (bitterly) not being able to get their shortwave receiver to work. I really wanted to tune in HCJB and Radio Moscow. This probably led me to ask Santa for a Lafayette HA-600A receiver in 1973 or so. An earlier influence was the little intercom kits. I think they worked over the AC lines? We took some of them to the beach bungalows we had in Lavallette NJ. With them we were able to speak clearly to similar units in nearby bunalows. Wow, that was cool. That got me interested in radio. Cassette tape recorders were another early influence. I still have a recording I made with a tape recorder I got for Christmas, probably in 1972. I used this recorder to practice CW for the ham exam. I managed to escape the CB madness. But I came close to falling into the groovy psycho stuff of the early 1970s. I remember the Transcendental Meditation gizmos. I never built one, but if I had I may have been better off with CB. I kind of wish I had followed the example of the Woz and Jobs by making telephone blue boxes. This could have led me to riches. But as Jean Shepherd used to say, young men often come to a fork in the road: one path leads to wealth, the other to ham radio flea markets. I got on the second path. Thanks Mike! 73 de HI7/N2CQR Bill
Oh yes I had spectacular failures and so did most experimenters. Oh I forgot how important those cassette recorders were to us! We used them constantly!
I got interested in electronics when I was 12 years old. In 1952 we had a hurricane that we lost power. I made radio that was called a grid leak detector to get some information about the hurricane. At the time I did not know what the circuit was called. One Saturday I went and took a survey. The result was the people who conducted the survey came to my home and told my parents that I had a proficiency in math and physics and suggested I enroll in there tech school, which I did. I graduated in three years with a GPA of 3.9 and became a member of the Electronic Engineering Society. I retired in 2003 after having a very diverse career in electronics from guided missal controls, radar, lasers, microwave radios, satellite communications. Now that I am retired I spend my time on using electronics. I designed a wireless system so that i can use my voice to control my optical telescope. In place of an eye piece I use a CCD camera and view the objects on a 42 inch flat screen TV in my home where it is nice and warm.
Oh there was a lot going on all right and I was pretty oblivious - a lot of good times and fun, some innocent, some not so much - but angst too and no guarantees that we weren't going to blow our selves up at some point, or have some kind of revolution.
No, actually. When we went to, say, Woolworth's back in the early 1960s, I didn't go to the toy section, I'd head straight to Plumbing & Electrical. Didn't want a toy, I wanted the Real McCoy. My first electrical/electronic project was a control panel made from a wooden fruit crate. It was the control panel for my imaginary space ship. I was inspired by that big flashing control panel on _Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea_ that just debuted that fall (that same panel also featured on _The Time Tunnel_ in 1966). My panel had light switches and a gaggle of neon pilot lights, and an outlet into which I plugged one of those rectangular Sylvania 'Panelescent' night lights. That was my radar screen. I'd stick little bits of a broken magnet on it and those were alien ships I'd encounter as I explored the galaxy. Built a crystal radio from an article in one of my older brother's hobby magazines and put that in a second crate (both of which I painted black) along with a couple more pilot lights. That was my Communications Center. I had loads of fun with it while listening to the latest pop songs on the crystal set; A Hard Day's Night by the Beatles, This Diamond Ring by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, King of the Road by Roger Miller. All those great hits from back then. Radio station KOZE in Lewiston, Idaho. When they signed-off around midnight, I could hear KSL in Salt Lake City, 600 miles away. My first DX! I can't think of a single toy I had as much fun with.
I had that Radio Shack Kit, still fool around some electronics to this day. Although I went the mechanic route witch is widely is widely based on electronics today.
It seems counterintuitive, but the transition to EVs could actually reduce the amount of discrete electronic modules in a vehicle. Gonna be interesting next few years.
Yes, the electronics of my youth influenced me. However, when it came time to attend a university my being disabled meant I lived home thus initially went to UAlbany in Albany. UAlbany at the time only had software engineering & not any of the traditional engineering paths. I initially selected software engineering, but switched within a semester to mathematics. From there I aquired first the bachelor's followed by graduate degrees in pure mathematics. Hence, I know very little regarding electronics in comparison to theoretical probability and other obscure topics.
I went to college 3rd year after SUNY Canton to RIT for Co-op and they had no room in the dorm and I ended up in Tower A NTID ( deaf students). Learning sign language to survive!
@@MIKROWAVE1 I thought about RIT out by either Utica or Rochester. I was interested in their Civil Engineer programs. History is the UAlbany adventure due to being close to home. I like what I settled for, but if I had my druthers I'd of pursued all that interested me. Oh well, gives me something to learn from the basics in my retirement.
Definately! Many others Definated these Guys Playing with Radio Electronics as Electronic Paranoids! Me too! and they set Stones in yor Proffesional Carreer Way!!!?
They are not Soviet/Russian walkie-talkies, I'm pretty sure of that. The Warsaw Pact actively used the 11 meter band I recall so (could be wrong there, anybody who knows better?).... And the Russians had a 38-40 MHz "CB-band", or something that came close. They had a LOT of articles on how to build a Superregen Transceiver with 2 or 3 tubes and some with transistors. I've got a few of these on my HDD, and there's Russian language articles and PDFs out there on these things. Regards, Thomas PS. Nice video as always!
Physics toys influenced mine, pulleys, magnets, lenses, buzzers, a steam engine, a flashlight, crystal radio, tiny electric motors, rockets, tube amplifiers, transistor radios, the SW band on my parent's radio.record player, a good really good SW, (Hallicrafters SX-25,) antennas, a couple of small solar cells, CB radio kit, walkie-talkies, televisions, speakers, a Theramin kit, on and on, second hand and broken things mostly that I'd fix, or try to. I always wanted the 150 in one kit, but couldn't afford it. Worse, you had to disassemble everything you built, and that seemed stupid. Batteries were always the problem. I was a rural kid, and never walked into a Radio Shack till I was an adult.
I was lucky enough to be in a college town, in a rural area, so kind of an oasis where there were close by hams, and radio shops that you could pillage dumpsters and abandoned TVs from!
@@MIKROWAVE1, that's where I am now. The University of Colorado is half a mile away, and I hit dumpsters of start-ups regularly. I have lots of goodies, but I lost in a fire a quarter million SMT resistors of essentially every value, 240 miles of 44 gauge magnet wire, antique shortwaves, thousands of transistors, thousands of crystals, thousands of feet of hook-up wire, and lots of other good stuff I scrounged from dumpsters. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff, and none of it was insured because it was freebie surplus stuff I gathered dumpster diving. So I started all over again.
I never seen anything like them as a kid we was to poor i had a mw pocket radio i converted to sw broadcast when i was 11 i got into electronics from striping old tv's found on a rubbish tip some times i would find an old radio i could fix a lot of fun back then
Kids in the US are being raised in houses without basements. A kid without a basement, or at least a garage, does not have a place to play with electronics, chemicals, and tools...so will be less likely to become an engineer. EE's who were building things in the basement at age 12 are much better than mere "book" engineers.
Yep.. 2 10-in-1's and a 100-in-1 plus a few other kits, walki-talkie's from RS.. Battery of the month club.. Other purchases. It was a shame when they went under. I bought a 2 meter radio from RS that I still own.. (I'm a Ham). Certainly RS and electronic toys had an influence on my life but not my career path. Thanks for the video and memories, I still own the RS kits too!
I had no people close to me that were interested in electronics like myself. I read about crystal radios in schoolbooks but my older than average parents took no interest in helping me out in building one or perusing my interest. Also, no money to spend on my own kits as a kid on the prairies in the 60's and 70's. Life got in the way. Later after I had kids of my own, I built crystal sets as well as used my other self-discovered simple electrical knowledge in experiments and farm projects etc. My kids did pick up a lot of that from me. They also share interest with my grandchildren and they have built simple kits. Me....... I understand a lot of simple stuff compared to the average joe that doesn't give two hoots about this stuff, but in the big picture I'm as dumb as a post. I'm always learning and still like electronic and electrical stuff as a grandpa and senior citizen. Now days a lot of farm stuff is CAN-BUS systems. I have a son that specializes in that kind of stuff on farm equipment for a living.
@@MIKROWAVE1 Simple elementary science class and books. School library. County science fairs. Anywhere I could grasp something. I liked to take stuff apart as kid. Plug it in and figure out how the magic works! Cut it apart and see what inside. etc.
Help. I have a Y7060 GE radio and I would like to restore it. Do you have any service data or schematic information that you can share? Even if you can take detailed pictures of the foil side of the circuit board. I would love ti restore it. Yes, radio shack , Healthkit. Lafayette, Olson electronics, all influenced me to become an inventor and electrical engineer. 😊
I am in the same boat. I have one (The GE Base Station) that as you saw, just arrived this year and it needs restoration. So maybe a research and restoration video coming?
@@MIKROWAVE1 Perhaps not yet existing (at least outside of a lab) impeded them. It's the same reason I refuse to use flux capacitors for time travel. :)
no toys for me. I lived on the farm and toys were expensive. it was junk. that was free. I enjoyed this as I had non of this as a kid. I was born in 1945 so older
Actually, in a sense, I found not having money an advantage in terms of learning about electronics. In the 60s it seemed old broken TVs and AM radios were both free and plentiful, and so using harvested parts one could build much of the ham or audio equipment you desired, but you had to design it outright or adapt designs to the parts you had. So a great deal of my youth was spent in the RCA receiving tube manual and the ARRL books I could get from the library. Great fun (and a lot more interesting than school at the time)!
Being an adopted only child, I was spoiled of course! But my parents started dropping me off on a relatives farm like daycare each summer and boy did I get a new education!
Wow that is an old sunspot cycle of long ago idea. This was all the rage in the 80s before lower cost dedicated 10M rigs existed. Do you remember the glut of HyGain boards that were released massively on the demise of the companies CB production? These boards were the basis for many articles.
Your CB radio needed forty crystals. Or, only channel 19? I listened to WWV for thousands of hours as a kid (on Hallicrafters.) Today, if I imagine the 1sec clicks in my mind, I'll hear the tone and english voice every 60 sec. "At the tone, the time will be eleven hours ...forty three minutes coordinated universal time." If I then look at a clock after five minutes of this, sometimes I'm off by five seconds, sometimes I'm off by a half second. But then I was blown away to hear that WWV transmits digital info, and there was a little hum-sound (only present during some seconds.) Holy cow. I never even noticed it. During an east coast vacation, I forced the family to drive to Barrington, for Edmund Scientific the factory store. I got one of their 500lbs electromagnets for three bucks instead of thirty (it didn't have any box, and was in a barrel of other junk.) That and 12in fresnel lens, polaroid plastic, diffraction sheet. Don Lancaster, the TTL Cookbook. He's still online today. Young minds: Newark wouldn't sell to little kids. Digikey loved kids. After forty years in the industry, I've bought many tens of kilo-dollars of parts. Never from Newark. They made enemies of all electrical engineers, back when we were only twelve, while the digikey flyer grew to about four inches thick before they went to cdroms
Wow quite a story! Oh Yes Edmund was opening another Pandora's box. I worked with Walt Jung (555 Cookbook) and Charles Kitchin (Kitchin Regen) along the way and many other radio and electronics guys.
Memories... I used to have the Radio Shack Archer Space Patrol Walkie Talkies. Channel 14. I ran a long wire and connected it to the whip. I used to be able to talk to my friends who lived in the next neighborhood. I also had a Rocket Radio (Crystal Radio) It had a rod that would extend and that would
tune in the different stations. Those toys along with an older Brother who was into Electronics got me into Electronics and I have loved it every since.
Later the Ham Radio Novice came along , High School Electronics Vocational Program. To a break for a few years to learn what I didn't want to do in life.
Went to a local College and did well. Ended up doing Test and Measurement work for an FCC program within Digital Equipment Corporation for 17 years then went with EMC Corporation and retired there.
For some reason, the mom and pop taxi in our town used Channel 14!
@@MIKROWAVE1 In my neighbor hood there was a group of CBer's who used channel 14. We drove them crazy but were could we go we only had a single channel walkie. It was a lot of fun and it waa all magic.
Those toys propelled me into an electronics's career, ham radio and a general fascination for science and technology. At 67 I'm still building stuff, buying parts and trying new stuff.
That was a FUN look back on a number of things I toyed with as a youth... And YES! I ended up becoming an Electronics Engineer!
Part of the fun was modifying and breaking the thing and then having regrets.
What a memories! I remember, when I was 13, in the middle 60's, I got as Christmas present the kit Electronic Engineer, by PHILIPS. It was my entrance in the imaging electronic world. 😊
Me too. I remember the legs breaking off the AF116.
73 Steve
🔊📻🎧🤗😄
I have a recollection of tiny three legged rubber underpants that fitted on the transistor to help stop the legs breaking off. I can't remember if they came with the Philips kit or perhaps a give away from Practical Electronics or maybe later at College to protect their precious stock.
73 Steve
@@m0kov as far as I remember, there were no any kind of protection for the transistor's lead included in the kit. It was, really, a problem. I remember I was using the plastic cover from wires to solve that and protect somehow the transistors. (AC126 if I remember well... 🤔😄 )
73s, Vassilis.
Me too. It lead to a career in electonics and a ham licence.
This sure brings back great memories! The Radio Shack 150 in 1 Electronic Project Kit, Science Fair crystal radio kit, Sears walkie talkies, Bearcat IV Electra scanner, GE 10 Band radio receiver, and a CB plastic base station with morse key all played an important role in my childhood and my love of electronics!
Wow, the whole deal!
My brother was born in ‘51 and I was born in ‘49. My father was a chemical engineer (Purdue University ‘49). By the mid-50s my brother and I enjoyed Christmas and birthday hauls that included HeathKit crystal and tube radio kits, chemistry sets, erector set, Mattel science kits, All About books, etc. Both of us received BS in Physics .
My other buddies dad taught physics and similar story. He even got those chemistry sets where he had alcohol lamps and RC planes and rockets!
Yes. Starting with an AA5 radio that I tore apart, and put on a wooden board so I could see the tubes.
Then in 1970 or so, I was traveling with my dad, and we stopped at a warehouse in Yakima Washington, and I saw a Zenith upright radio that the warehouse guys used to listen to ball games. I asked about it and they said I could have it!!!! That is where the shortwave listening started! That led to getting a Radio Shack 65 in 1 kit, crystal sets, Radio Shack one tube radio etc.... I built all of the projects and they worked!
In 1975, I got my ham license while in jr high. I checked out all of the Boys First (and the Second, and the Third and the Forth) Book I've been active every day of my ham career. That lead to meeting other hams in in Spokane Washington, and I met a guy that worked at the local Motorola Service Shop. He said they were looking for a radio installer. I applied (by talking to the shop owner) (this was in 1979). I still lived at home and worked for the cable company which was a job, but not fun working outside in the -22 degree weather. I told the shop owner I would work for free for a few days. He liked that idea, and I went out with one of the teks the next day.
I was pretty skinny in those days and had been under lots of houses to run cable TV wiring. I was easy for me and I understood exactly what they were doing.
We we got back to the shop, the tek I was with told the shop owner, "hire him". That was the day it all started a 42 1/2 year career in the 2-way radio industry. I bought the Motorola shop with a couple of other folks that worked there. We closed the shop in 1999 and I went right to work at Motorola. Retired at 62 in 2021 with a pension and social security and lots of $$ in 401Ks. Living large with no payments except for food, utilities and car maintenance and gas.
I'm (my wife and I) are living happily ever-after.
Growing up in Michigan in the 60s and 70s I had the Delux Heathkit breadboard kit (which I still have). I had many enjoyable hours building the many circuits from the CPO to a 3 transistor Broadcast Band receiver. Later I had a couple of the Science Fair kits from RS. I sent me on my way to University for a BSEE degree. Thanks for bringing back the memories.
Another RS story!
My first exposure was an Eldon crystal radio kit...great fun...
I bought one of those Archer Space Patrol base stations in the early 70's. I remember it was almost $30. The Radio Shack was just a block from my house. I had to call my dad at work to get his OK to buy it as it was from my earnings. My friend carried the batteries and I carried the radio home. Finally got my ham ticket in 1984. I also got a 100 in one Science Fair kit for Christmas one year. I had the one tube AM P-Box kit also.
Yes! I had a few of those kits/toys in my youth. Still active in electronics hobby. Thank you for the memories.
In 1958 I had an Erectronic kit that used jiffy connectors to be assembled onto a perf board with various templates to show and explain the circuit. It had a 1T4 vacuum tube and also a germanium diode for basics. It was powered by a
45 volt B battery and a 1.5 volt A cell. I actually found the kit at a flea market several years ago! It still had its original parts! Fast forward to 1985 after attending night school for basic electronics and digital training, I spent 16 years in the field.
Wow we have to see this thing!
My first RTTY TU was built on "P-Body" box! Oh, I'm feeling so old... TNX Mike for the travel down memory lane! 73 - Dino KLØS
I avoided microprocessor courses in college, which was a big mistake looking back.
Mine was a Philips, which did intercom, morse code, radio and a few others. This expanded my knowledge in electronics, my jobs included television repairs, marine radio communication equipment repairs and lastly Marconi instruments UK. Thanks for bringing back happy memories.
My Dad and I built a Radio Shack P-box code oscillator together in the early 1970's. He gave me a clapped out Halacrafters S-40 and check book register to use as a log. My grandparents bought me a transistor radio for Christmas 1970; I spent many nights listening to Mystery Theater with the radio under my pillow. And, I was into crystal radios, fortunately we lived across the mississippi river from WCCO's 50K watt transmitter. My wife and kids got me the radio shack crystal radio Christmas 1993. It still sits on my radio shack desk running 24/7/365! and, I sent signal reports to San Francisco and Wainwright, Alberta with that set -ha. Thanks for the great video! AA0QZ
For me, Denshi block kits in the '70s. I also had one of the Radio Shack 150 in 1 kits also. Lots of fun.
I had that exact kit (150 in One) and played with it for hours and hours on end after school home alone till dinner. It shaped my life more than I knew now that I look back. I was never afraid to take something apart and fix it and still not. I'm an IT Directory now with 31 years in IT and still tinker at home with electroincs, 3D printers, PI, Arduino's, just about anything that has electric running in it. Can't stop learning!
How many toys can claim that kind of influence and foster those results?
How many toys can claim that kind of influence and foster those results?
😃 As a ham, still playing with the radio toys... Yes, had a few electronic toys as a kid and my father who worked in electronics provided encouragement. Can't really remember a time when I was not interested in radio and electronics. Went on to have a career as an Engineer.
Steve, this happened to a lot of us, but frankly, my dad almost electrocuted me! He was not electrical. I was adopted and recently found my birth father's side with electrical going back to the 1910 census.
My fathers career was mostly electrical, although he didn't have a voluntary start. On been enlisted into the army at the start of ww2 the recruiting officer told him that they needed signalmen. When asked if he knew Ohms law, my father replied, I've heard of it. Right then lad you're in.
Steve M0KOV
👍 As children we built our own medium wave transmitters with coils wound on toilet grooves and later FM transmitters with the ECC85 and El95 on self-bent aluminum chassis. That was definitely the start of my professional future as a physicist. There were no such convenient kits in my day.
I spent 33 years of my life as a Avionics Technician. No doubt that was a result of an interest in electronics because of my Dad. My dad was involved in radio and TV repair most of his life so I guess I picked it up from him. Growing up I always had an old tube SW receiver in my bed room and listened to them a lot. At 13 I built a regenerative receiver from a magazine article, and a tremolo circuit for my guitar amp. I also remember also having one of those electronic project kits that allowed you to build several circuits including an AM radio and intercom. I don't remember who manufactured it though. My Dad was never a Ham though he listed to SW all the time. I didn't catch the Ham bug until I was 23 yrs old and I built a ton of Heathkit equipment.
I became an electronic engineer because of 3 reasons. I grew up in Detroit, my Sunday school teacher taught us boys after church all about radios, crystal sets, everthing about electronics, colour codes of resisters and ham radio. The kits or toys we bought were fun and educational. In high school we built tesla coils and our final exam was to build a multiple pole motor and it had to run for 2 minutes. I subscribed to popular electronics. Our boy scout troop build radios from army surplus. We all learned about 11 year sun spot cycles, skip, solar flairs, and had contests to see how many qsl cards we had from listening to short wave. I build many heath kits. Education and helping boys become men and having mentors does not exist anymore. I was born in 1941. I bought my first transistor, a ck21 pnp in 1956
Got Shortwave Receiver age 9 about 1962, always loved electronics and later computers which led to formal education in electronics and eventually computer networking. Also Amateur Radio ; ) I am retired and still interested ; ) Thank You.
Excellent, and thanks for watching my wandering around radio and electronic topics.
My childhood and teen years just flashed before me!
In 1970s Australia we had Dick Smith Electronics and Tandy Electronics (Radio Shack) leading up the radio and electronics hobby market, so many similarities..
I neglected to research the toys available to the rest of the world. Maybe a follow up?
I had the 20-in-1 kit, which was a little different. Each component was on a separate little plastic base, and you could move them around to arrange your circuit. It still had the springs, but the connections were made between them with little metal bars. I remember connecting the solar cell to the audio transformer to "boost the voltage", and being confused when it didn't work. A few years later in 6th grade, my dad bought me a Heathkit digital alarm clock to build. It still works and keeps perfect time in my office 40 years later.
I bought one of those Jameco digital clock kits with the giant ASIC and 7 segment displays put into a Radio Shack box.
i had radioshack snap-kits sets growing up in the 2000's
I never saw those, as they came later, but that was a new approach.
By the time I was born, Lafayette didn't exist. I had a Radio Shack 160 in 1, but that was it. I was the kid buying the floor sweeping capacitor and transistor packs from the back of the store.
And POLY-PACKS, in the back of Byte? Meshna. Jerryco. Edmund Scientific. Olsen. B&F. Digi-Key was only a four-page flyer. During college I drove to Boston for a science fiction convention, went out to Poly Packs, but they were closed on sunday. And all their windows were covered with brown paper, so I couldn't even look inside.
My saddest discovery after moving to New England in 1983 was finding the original Poly Paks building, which had finally closed!
Another wonderful video, prompting memories of childhood and the fascinating world of radio and electronics that so fascinated us then and still does today. Thank you.
Thanks so much for subscribing and enjoying.
YYYESSS!!! I still have that same 150-In-1 Radio Shack kit from when I was about 10 years old in about 1976 (my father gave it to me for my birthday that year, or a year close to it), as well as several others RS and similar kits, and everything, including the accompanying books, is still in MINT CONDITION! My father was an electronics technician in the Navy (“Fire Control Technician”) on Navy Destroyers in the 1950s and 1960s, and then went to work on Polaris missiles, Westinghouse, and beyond to some other electronics firms after that. He would bring me home components and parts from work and would teach me how to build simple little circuits with CARDBOARD BOXES being my project boxes, and this was when I was a LITTLE KID, in single digit years! I would also “help” (watch) my father fix TVs and such and I learned a lot back then, and used to enjoy going to town to the drug store to test and buy tubes with the big tube testers in the store. These were GREAT times, and then Radio Shack started coming out with these kits, and everything really shifted into high gear! I eventually took some correspondence courses with the Cleveland Institute Of Electronics in the 80s and 90s, and wound up working in I.T. and also teaching it (and music and P.E.) at a couple local colleges simultaneously... I.T. and doing everything at board level and not at the component level anymore kind of knocked me out of electronics for a while (except audio and music electronics), so I am again, decades later, sort of relearning a lot of this stuff, and rediscovering it all anew again, and having a blast… Thanks for this video, and all your others! 😊😊😊
Wow, that cardboard box prototyping trick! I forgot about that. Oh we have to do that one on the channel.
Gen-Xer borrn in 77 and, yes, electronic toys got me where I am. Your video covered several beginnings for me - playing with walkie-talkies with a friend, my dad introducing me to shortwave radio, and later getting a Science Fair 130-in-1 electronics lab. Got into guitar as a teen which lead me to building my own fuzz and overdrive boxes. Became obsessed with vintage computers in my early 20's, analogue synths in my mid-20's, then valve regens and ham radio in my early 30's. Now in my mid 40's and am absolutely overwhelmed by electronics and the hobby has practically become my life.
Wow the full gamut of temptations!
i had the cardboard 60-in-one, wood/cardboard 150-in-one like you showed, and the plastic breadboard 300-in-one with all the logic IC's. I learned on my own, none of my family or friends cared about electronics. got my ham license when i was 13, took 3 times cause i kept failing the code test, but i eventually got my ticket!"
Wow, now that is what I call full in one support!
At 17:16 - P-Box Kits!
Oh, my gosh, I built the 3-Transistor Shortwave Receiver kit when I was about 12!
My grandmother stayed with us while my parents worked. So, I snuck the ladder out of the garage and climbed up on the ROOF to tack down the little wire antenna. I can't remember if it came with the radio or was purchased separately but it had little plastic dog-bone ends. I never told anyone about doing that, but I left it up there the next year when we moved.
I remember clearly receiving French and Russian programs with that thing in the evenings. Looking it up - I got lucky, that was just around the middle of Solar Cycle 20 which was an active cycle.
Tie that with taking apart every broken appliance and radio (and sometimes even fixing it!) - I had a 43-year career in software and computers as well as an electronics hobby.
Clandestine aerial secreted into the domicile!
I had the 10 in one kit at 19:19. Wow I totally forgot about that until today. I remember the 150 in 1 kits, but that was moving up in the world! Burt probably remembers his first soup cans and string phone. I had a buddy of mine who was an engineer for Bell Labs ( Lucent Technologies) and he could afford any radio he wanted, yet his favorite thing to do was making crystal receivers with Tinker Toys, old magnet wire and hot glue. It's funny how some of the most brilliant minds I've known favor the simplest technology and really enjoy it the best. It shows true appreciation for the field (pun intended) of electronics. Thanks Mike for another trip down memory lane!
Old dude reverts to childlike behavior with electrical devices. Sounds like this channel, all right!
@@MIKROWAVE1 I played with electricity as a child. I had one of those electric bell kits that used a single D cell. Well, I though it would be cool to plug it into the wall outlet. At least it was a switched outlet! PUFF (not pf).
Great stuff. I had many of these items! Thanks for the memories.
Growing up in the 90's, I had the Radio Shack 100- (150?) in-one and later 300-in-one kits. I sure learned a lot! I remember surprising my parents at the dinner table by asking for another germanium diode. I eventually got the Radio Shack crystal radio kit and still have it! I also had the AM/FM and shortwave receiver kits. Who else here ripped all the components out of their xx-in-one kits?
I had the 150-in-one kit in the mid 80's and used it all the time, but over time I used hook-up wire for other things and the transistor/s burnt out or failed and I did take parts out of it. Sadly I no longer have it and I also remember having that organ that someone gave me.
Please sir, may I have another diode?
In while in high school, I built a voice synthesizer, then in the Navy in spare time I built a Theremin, another code oscillator. When young it was experimental breaking and fixing things. I did electronics/motor controls for work and CB/ham radio for play.
I finally built a Theremin and did a series on it. Quite an adventure!
@@MIKROWAVE1 I will look for it, I have been interested in this side of science since that crystal radio that I found at an estate auction at the age of 10, thanks for what you do here.
I fondly remember when I was around 10 years old getting a Thames and Cosmos 12AU7 regen for Christmas from my folks. I spent countless hours (and countless AA batteries) in my room at 2am listening to far off shortwave broadcasts. Wish I still had it. Like almost all of my toys it eventually ended up being taken apart, which looking back is kinda silly because there wasn't anything hidden that couldn't be gleamed from turning the radio upside down. Oh well. Thanks Mom and Dad.
Yes I " added an amplifier to get more distance" to my base station. Um it was louder? What a mess.
I was interested in electronics at age 5, show & tell my collection of TV parts. Got a Heathkit Workshop 35 that at 9, I made all my friends help me put the projects together. First soldering iron at 11. Went to Community College and flunked out of Oregon State. I'm now a micro-controller/FPGA HW/SW engineer in the medical EEG industry.
Wow! Do you have the scars on your hand? Hey I tried using a Woodburning set ad a soldering iron!
Mike, you really triggered an awful lot of memories with this video to say the least. For me, interest in electrical/electronics started at 3-4 years of age, in the '50s our uncle gave my brothers this very old 4 tube radio that they tore apart, I was totally fascinated. I had all kinds of questions how things worked, see my dad had this Zenith tombstone radio that was our door to AM & SW listening, My nephew has that radio to this day. 2nd grade, I begged my parents to buy me an electric train set, I learned a lot about electricity from that. In 7th grade we got the Lafayette Catalog and some of the first things I bought was their 6 transistor radio, Ge transistors, and a selenium solar cell. The solar cell came with a book that showed how to build a crystal set and a one transistor solar powered radio, still have those items. The love for electronics grew from then on, self taught mostly!
Wow, that is quite a story, and not so rare with many on the channel.
@@MIKROWAVE1 Yes Mike, there is a lot more to my story, too much to tell it all on here. Looking back I believe I was a prodigy, like it was easy for me to learn on my own.
Had an Edu-Kit purchased from an add in the back of Boys Life. Built a wireless microphone kit from Heathkit.
I still have my Radio merit badge book!
You made my day. I had that GE CB base station back in the late 1960s. I’d love to get my hands on one. I’m going to eBay right now.
I started very young. Investigating old radios.. I was building crystal sets by 10 and regen radios by 12. Tech school right out of HS, and several factory jobs for a few years. After encouragement from my then sister in law I looked at positions at a major Ivy League university. Got hired designing and building custom laboratory research equipment. 35+ years later I retired at age 60. Electronics has been a hobby as well as a career for most of my life. I'm still a ham radio operator. It was a good match for me.
A hobby can become an obsession - but not every one pays the bills; and over so many years.
While living in Elmira NY, I had a no-name "20 in one" kit, non radioshack. It had a pre-built audio amplifier. I used that for way more than just twenty projects. Lost that in the flood, as well as many issues of Popular Electronics bought secretly with lunch-money. But I also got about ten flood-damaged TV sets, a 5-tube table radio, a geiger counter, a shortwave. Hose off the mud, dry for weeks. (But I'd already become an electronics fanatic by then.) I converted the table-radio into an audio amp. I used the geiger counter HV supply to drive a TV flyback, for a tiny Tesla Coil, with a nail as the main terminal, made half-inch corona discharge. When I went to college at U of Rochester, one of the TV sets became my first computer terminal on Altair-type 8080 kit-computer (1977,) after I built a keyboard from scratch.
I don't know how we survived playing with those old TVs! What a treasure trove of parts they were.
@@MIKROWAVE1 A great secret of experimental physics is that you can vent a color television tube, then carefully scribe/shatter the rear half, and clean up the screen. It's a window made of thick lead-glass. Try to buy a similar window for x-ray shielding, expect $500 or more. (The late model Sonys with the ultra-flat screen are even better. Go buy 'em at the city dump (I mean recycling station.) )
Hi Mike. In the sixties I built a "ground wave" station utilising an old tube radio (AF stages only) and a speaker transformer and double pole throw switch (to switch for receive and transmit) connected to two ground rods and communicated with a friend about a quarter of a mile away on his similar system. This system was tried out in the armed forces including submarines. It was from an article in Practical Wireless in May 1964 and February 1965... Just in case you were interested to check it out... 73s
That is cool! Just found and downloaded the articles.
Wow that was a classic Hippie ground radio setup!
I still have my 150n1 kit and everything that went with it, but it didn't drive me to a career in railroading!🤠👍
Well, railroading is a whole other kids' passion!
@@MIKROWAVE1 Your right, originally I started college to become a firefighter, but somewhere along the line I wound up working for the Railroad ! 😂
Great time for electronic learning with a mature solid state industry eager for trained kids.
Brings back old forgotten Christmas gift Memories !! ...Some time late '50's (65 yrs ago) Received That genuine "Remco" labeled "Transistor Radio & home Broadcaster" kit for Christmas...After a very Difficult assembly Effort the Transistor radio tuned very Broadly & not very Sensitive....The home "Broadcast" wasn't RF or transistorized but simply a Carbon element microphone wired thru batteries to a 4" speaker.... Remember feeling kinda confusingly Disappointed as a kid...By June, I was stripping it down & using for parts of my own Diy radios...Ended up wiring the Carbon mic in series with a 6 volt auto ignition Coil & really RF "Broadcasting" a rough & crude (But intelligible) voice Modulated spark Transmitter !! ....Pretty cool as a kid diy salvaging the parts & making it a Real radio Broadcaster !! .....Back in my early Struggling kid (But stubbornly persistent) days & No one in family radio or electronics knowledgeable to help...
Wow! A carbon mic and battery! Maybe with a transformer?
I remember the CB Base station, had a variation of that one. I still have that exact 150-in-1 electronic project kit. It is now 47 years old.
I'm getting my hands on one to show off to the channel.
@@MIKROWAVE1 I'll keep an eye out for the video.
Nice video, Mike - now wait while I watch it again at slower speed.
Here in 1970s UK, I was lucky enough to have the Philips EE1003 "Electronic Engineer" kit, plus (year on year) the two expander kits. I still have them. I must clean off the corrosion, replace the broken components and build something to show off on UA-cam!
Slow Speed? You will see the subliminal TUBES RULE
Yes, we need to see this thing in action.
Mike, nice trip down memory lane.
I had the Sears Base Station at 15:43. We had an army of kids in our neighborhood all on channel-14. And since I had the base, I was the commander--HiHi!
Also built the Psycho-Lite from kit; however it always put a buzz back into the stereo/audio source due to switching noise.
Built the famous Quaker-Oats electric motor with an electromagnet and paper-clips that lined the lid; got my Electricity Merit Badge.
Had the P-Box One Tube Radio, wasn't the greatest but wish I still had it with what I know now; but did Radio Merit Badge.
Also built the P-Box Electronic Organ Kit; got my Electronics Merit Badge.
Had the Radio Patrolman receiver that was VFO tuned; you could listen to anything on VHF!
Got a 5" Sears reel-to-reel tape recorder in 1965; recorded George Carlin's first appearance as the Hippie-Dippie Weatherman on the Jimmy Dean show!
Finally something you didn't mention, was electric trains; I got a Sears electric train when I was about 8; learned more about electricity keeping it running!
They must have made a ton of channel 14 crystals thus lowering the cost - and thus agreeing on the channel by default.
American Science & Surplus (web, and Midwest USA) stores still sell these inexpensive ELECTRONIC KITS. I had the REMCO KIT in '64 and later a CB base with key. Led to my Novice in '67. Great fun.
The catalogs were effective at marketing to eager youngsters!
I was born in 1986 and played with my brother's "Elektronika" experiment set made in the USSR in the '70s/80s, it was a lot of fun to experiment and even though I didn't understand the instructions in Russian, I could still build circuits from schematics, and it was when I was a wee kid in the ground school. It had parts like transistors, small scale integration ICs (a bunch of transistors in a package), RC, diodes, transformers, LDR, LED, relay, a speaker and maybe some other parts. Later on I moved on to taking old devices apart and building circuits dead bug style, building kits, making boards and devices. I ultimately got interested in audio, tube electronics and vintage stuff. Even though I studied chemistry and got a master's degree in it, electronics and computer stuff stuck with me, and now I'm running my own shop/lab and UA-cam channel. Still gotta learn, pass the exams and get a licence.
There is a lot of curiosity on the eastern block electronics toys, kits, and trainers. I recently friended a former Soviet EE who gave me some eastern semiconductors, parts, and tubes to play with. He has that solid first principles and theoretical foundation that I only ever saw in the MIT educated folks I worked with in various companies.
@@MIKROWAVE1 the differences in education between the West and the Eastern Bloc are interesting; it seems to me (I may be wrong here) that at least here in Poland the EE studies are big on math, theory and fundamentals - but not necessarily project work or practical skills like soldering etc. I studied EE for half a year and dropped out because I didn't really get calculus or physics, and because I noticed I wouldn't learn what interested me most at the time i.e. vacuum tube technology.
My Remco was red. They used ‘piano wire’ in the thing… can’t count the times the uncooperative wire ‘stabbed me’ while trying to bent it around screws in the housing. Junk. But… I was ‘on the air’ and hooked! Also, my Allied Radio Knight Kit 21-in-1 Transistor Lab had the ‘Wireless Broadcaster’. The bomb! 12 years old and my neighborhood has a new radio station… ME!
Post high school I entered the broadcasting industry as a (paid!! 😂) DJ. Did that for about 10 years. A fun filled misstep in terms of a career. Following that, I masqueraded as an un-degreed electronics technician.
Never have had a career, come to think of it. 😊The End.
Well its hard to figure how they came up with that wire, but you have to admit - it was kid resistant. It was not resistant to my plastic melter woodburning kit!
I vaguely remember the springs on the Radio Shack kits -- I also remember (bitterly) not being able to get their shortwave receiver to work. I really wanted to tune in HCJB and Radio Moscow. This probably led me to ask Santa for a Lafayette HA-600A receiver in 1973 or so.
An earlier influence was the little intercom kits. I think they worked over the AC lines? We took some of them to the beach bungalows we had in Lavallette NJ. With them we were able to speak clearly to similar units in nearby bunalows. Wow, that was cool. That got me interested in radio.
Cassette tape recorders were another early influence. I still have a recording I made with a tape recorder I got for Christmas, probably in 1972. I used this recorder to practice CW for the ham exam.
I managed to escape the CB madness. But I came close to falling into the groovy psycho stuff of the early 1970s. I remember the Transcendental Meditation gizmos. I never built one, but if I had I may have been better off with CB.
I kind of wish I had followed the example of the Woz and Jobs by making telephone blue boxes. This could have led me to riches. But as Jean Shepherd used to say, young men often come to a fork in the road: one path leads to wealth, the other to ham radio flea markets. I got on the second path.
Thanks Mike! 73 de HI7/N2CQR Bill
Oh yes I had spectacular failures and so did most experimenters. Oh I forgot how important those cassette recorders were to us! We used them constantly!
I got interested in electronics when I was 12 years old. In 1952 we had a hurricane that we lost power. I made radio that was called a grid leak detector to get some information about the hurricane. At the time I did not know what the circuit was called. One Saturday I went and took a survey. The result was the people who conducted the survey came to my home and told my parents that I had a proficiency in math and physics and suggested I enroll in there tech school, which I did. I graduated in three years with a GPA of 3.9 and became a member of the Electronic Engineering Society. I retired in 2003 after having a very diverse career in electronics from guided missal controls, radar, lasers,
microwave radios, satellite communications.
Now that I am retired I spend my time on using electronics. I designed a wireless system so that i can use my voice to control my optical telescope. In place of an eye piece I use a CCD camera and view the objects on a 42 inch flat screen TV in my home where it is nice and warm.
Wow! a natural progression and engineering story.
If I had a chance I would go back to the 60s or 70s and just stay there !
I did not how good I had things then !
Oh there was a lot going on all right and I was pretty oblivious - a lot of good times and fun, some innocent, some not so much - but angst too and no guarantees that we weren't going to blow our selves up at some point, or have some kind of revolution.
No, actually. When we went to, say, Woolworth's back in the early 1960s, I didn't go to the toy section, I'd head straight to Plumbing & Electrical. Didn't want a toy, I wanted the Real McCoy.
My first electrical/electronic project was a control panel made from a wooden fruit crate. It was the control panel for my imaginary space ship. I was inspired by that big flashing control panel on _Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea_ that just debuted that fall (that same panel also featured on _The Time Tunnel_ in 1966). My panel had light switches and a gaggle of neon pilot lights, and an outlet into which I plugged one of those rectangular Sylvania 'Panelescent' night lights. That was my radar screen. I'd stick little bits of a broken magnet on it and those were alien ships I'd encounter as I explored the galaxy. Built a crystal radio from an article in one of my older brother's hobby magazines and put that in a second crate (both of which I painted black) along with a couple more pilot lights. That was my Communications Center. I had loads of fun with it while listening to the latest pop songs on the crystal set; A Hard Day's Night by the Beatles, This Diamond Ring by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, King of the Road by Roger Miller. All those great hits from back then. Radio station KOZE in Lewiston, Idaho. When they signed-off around midnight, I could hear KSL in Salt Lake City, 600 miles away. My first DX!
I can't think of a single toy I had as much fun with.
I had that Radio Shack Kit, still fool around some electronics to this day. Although I went the mechanic route witch is widely is widely based on electronics today.
It seems counterintuitive, but the transition to EVs could actually reduce the amount of discrete electronic modules in a vehicle. Gonna be interesting next few years.
@@MIKROWAVE1 I went the heavy equipment and agriculture route, electronics used extensively in machine control and guidance.
@@Oliver-kv2mm Very nice a lot of CAN involved. I consulted at the Chrysler Proving Grounds in MI on a test robot driver program in the 90s.
Yes, the electronics of my youth influenced me. However, when it came time to attend a university my being disabled meant I lived home thus initially went to UAlbany in Albany. UAlbany at the time only had software engineering & not any of the traditional engineering paths. I initially selected software engineering, but switched within a semester to mathematics. From there I aquired first the bachelor's followed by graduate degrees in pure mathematics. Hence, I know very little regarding electronics in comparison to theoretical probability and other obscure topics.
I went to college 3rd year after SUNY Canton to RIT for Co-op and they had no room in the dorm and I ended up in Tower A NTID ( deaf students). Learning sign language to survive!
@@MIKROWAVE1 I thought about RIT out by either Utica or Rochester. I was interested in their Civil Engineer programs. History is the UAlbany adventure due to being close to home.
I like what I settled for, but if I had my druthers I'd of pursued all that interested me. Oh well, gives me something to learn from the basics in my retirement.
Definately! Many others Definated these Guys Playing with Radio Electronics as Electronic Paranoids!
Me too! and they set Stones in yor Proffesional Carreer Way!!!?
Catching the electronic disease young!
They are not Soviet/Russian walkie-talkies, I'm pretty sure of that. The Warsaw Pact actively used the 11 meter band I recall so (could be wrong there, anybody who knows better?).... And the Russians had a 38-40 MHz "CB-band", or something that came close. They had a LOT of articles on how to build a Superregen Transceiver with 2 or 3 tubes and some with transistors. I've got a few of these on my HDD, and there's Russian language articles and PDFs out there on these things.
Regards,
Thomas
PS. Nice video as always!
Could be. I don't have any info, but some on the channel certainly do!
Wow-oh-wow!...It doesn’t get any better than Baby Boomer kid's radio base stations and Science Fair Kits!!...You must have more to show us!!!
A whole world of UK, Euro and eastern block toys, apparently!
I had "Erectronic" kits by Gilbert. There was a basic kit, audio amplifier. Geiger counter. They were great.
Wow I need to find a picture of that setup!
@@MIKROWAVE1 There were tube kits and a transistor kit, I had both. Info is hard to find.
I used to play with electro magnetic stuff until I got an electronic kit for Christmas. Started me on the path now retired.
Did you build a motor? That was a cool scout and shop project.
Physics toys influenced mine, pulleys, magnets, lenses, buzzers, a steam engine, a flashlight, crystal radio, tiny electric motors, rockets, tube amplifiers, transistor radios, the SW band on my parent's radio.record player, a good really good SW, (Hallicrafters SX-25,) antennas, a couple of small solar cells, CB radio kit, walkie-talkies, televisions, speakers, a Theramin kit, on and on, second hand and broken things mostly that I'd fix, or try to. I always wanted the 150 in one kit, but couldn't afford it. Worse, you had to disassemble everything you built, and that seemed stupid. Batteries were always the problem. I was a rural kid, and never walked into a Radio Shack till I was an adult.
I was lucky enough to be in a college town, in a rural area, so kind of an oasis where there were close by hams, and radio shops that you could pillage dumpsters and abandoned TVs from!
@@MIKROWAVE1, that's where I am now. The University of Colorado is half a mile away, and I hit dumpsters of start-ups regularly. I have lots of goodies, but I lost in a fire a quarter million SMT resistors of essentially every value, 240 miles of 44 gauge magnet wire, antique shortwaves, thousands of transistors, thousands of crystals, thousands of feet of hook-up wire, and lots of other good stuff I scrounged from dumpsters. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff, and none of it was insured because it was freebie surplus stuff I gathered dumpster diving. So I started all over again.
I never seen anything like them as a kid we was to poor i had a mw pocket radio i converted to sw broadcast when i was 11 i got into electronics from striping old tv's found on a rubbish tip some times i would find an old radio i could fix a lot of fun back then
AH Yes - I converted an AM-FM radio to an AM 2M and Aircraft receiver.
Kids in the US are being raised in houses without basements. A kid without a basement, or at least a garage, does not have a place to play with electronics, chemicals, and tools...so will be less likely to become an engineer. EE's who were building things in the basement at age 12 are much better than mere "book" engineers.
Super spoiled here. I was an only child in a tiny house that had a small unused bedroom that I got half of for my table radio bench!
Yep.. 2 10-in-1's and a 100-in-1 plus a few other kits, walki-talkie's from RS.. Battery of the month club.. Other purchases. It was a shame when they went under. I bought a 2 meter radio from RS that I still own.. (I'm a Ham). Certainly RS and electronic toys had an influence on my life but not my career path. Thanks for the video and memories, I still own the RS kits too!
Do you think I can get a replacement for my Realistic Lifetime Gold 12AX7?
@@MIKROWAVE1 No, they lied to you.
@gotsteem Darn. Well, it's still good, so OK for now.
I had no people close to me that were interested in electronics like myself. I read about crystal radios in schoolbooks but my older than average parents took no interest in helping me out in building one or perusing my interest. Also, no money to spend on my own kits as a kid on the prairies in the 60's and 70's. Life got in the way. Later after I had kids of my own, I built crystal sets as well as used my other self-discovered simple electrical knowledge in experiments and farm projects etc. My kids did pick up a lot of that from me. They also share interest with my grandchildren and they have built simple kits. Me....... I understand a lot of simple stuff compared to the average joe that doesn't give two hoots about this stuff, but in the big picture I'm as dumb as a post. I'm always learning and still like electronic and electrical stuff as a grandpa and senior citizen. Now days a lot of farm stuff is CAN-BUS systems. I have a son that specializes in that kind of stuff on farm equipment for a living.
Tell me more about how you were inoculated. Books? Magazines? Library?
@@MIKROWAVE1 Simple elementary science class and books. School library. County science fairs. Anywhere I could grasp something. I liked to take stuff apart as kid. Plug it in and figure out how the magic works! Cut it apart and see what inside. etc.
I zorched the 1n34 germanium diode in my Blue REMCO kit...likely lightning or my careless handling took it out.
No cat was safe as you looked for a cat's whisker!
@ 12:10 - Spoken like a true RF engineer - refers to his son as his "first harmonic". Hah!
Little Harmonic is now a tall interferer!
@@MIKROWAVE1 Oh no! Not a QRMer!
American Science & Surplus sells the ELENCO ELECTRONIC PLAYGROUND KIT 130 PROJECTS for fifty four bux. 73.
In 2024 dollars, that is a real bargain!
Help. I have a Y7060 GE radio and I would like to restore it. Do you have any service data or schematic information that you can share? Even if you can take detailed pictures of the foil side of the circuit board. I would love ti restore it. Yes, radio shack , Healthkit. Lafayette, Olson electronics, all influenced me to become an inventor and electrical engineer. 😊
I am in the same boat. I have one (The GE Base Station) that as you saw, just arrived this year and it needs restoration. So maybe a research and restoration video coming?
Did you get a lot of feedback on the oscillator? Hams in the south in the 50s would not use integrated circuits.
Too many legs?
@@MIKROWAVE1 Perhaps not yet existing (at least outside of a lab) impeded them. It's the same reason I refuse to use flux capacitors for time travel. :)
Me too.
no toys for me. I lived on the farm and toys were expensive. it was junk. that was free. I enjoyed this as I had non of this as a kid. I was born in 1945 so older
Actually, in a sense, I found not having money an advantage in terms of learning about electronics. In the 60s it seemed old broken TVs and AM radios were both free and plentiful, and so using harvested parts one could build much of the ham or audio equipment you desired, but you had to design it outright or adapt designs to the parts you had. So a great deal of my youth was spent in the RCA receiving tube manual and the ARRL books I could get from the library. Great fun (and a lot more interesting than school at the time)!
@@ultrasoundguy1 thomas edison said. for creativity you need ideas and a pile of junk.
Being an adopted only child, I was spoiled of course! But my parents started dropping me off on a relatives farm like daycare each summer and boy did I get a new education!
Are you going to do any cb radio 10m/12m convertions? G7VFY
Wow that is an old sunspot cycle of long ago idea. This was all the rage in the 80s before lower cost dedicated 10M rigs existed. Do you remember the glut of HyGain boards that were released massively on the demise of the companies CB production? These boards were the basis for many articles.
@@MIKROWAVE1 time for refresh, perhaps.
Your CB radio needed forty crystals. Or, only channel 19?
I listened to WWV for thousands of hours as a kid (on Hallicrafters.) Today, if I imagine the 1sec clicks in my mind, I'll hear the tone and english voice every 60 sec. "At the tone, the time will be eleven hours ...forty three minutes coordinated universal time." If I then look at a clock after five minutes of this, sometimes I'm off by five seconds, sometimes I'm off by a half second. But then I was blown away to hear that WWV transmits digital info, and there was a little hum-sound (only present during some seconds.) Holy cow. I never even noticed it.
During an east coast vacation, I forced the family to drive to Barrington, for Edmund Scientific the factory store. I got one of their 500lbs electromagnets for three bucks instead of thirty (it didn't have any box, and was in a barrel of other junk.) That and 12in fresnel lens, polaroid plastic, diffraction sheet.
Don Lancaster, the TTL Cookbook. He's still online today.
Young minds: Newark wouldn't sell to little kids. Digikey loved kids. After forty years in the industry, I've bought many tens of kilo-dollars of parts. Never from Newark. They made enemies of all electrical engineers, back when we were only twelve, while the digikey flyer grew to about four inches thick before they went to cdroms
Wow quite a story! Oh Yes Edmund was opening another Pandora's box. I worked with Walt Jung (555 Cookbook) and Charles Kitchin (Kitchin Regen) along the way and many other radio and electronics guys.
Received my ham licensee in 1977, de WV8Y
I remember my first crystal receiver being a Remco back in the early 60's and was hooked on electronics ever since 🙂 73 de wa4jat
Those Remcos were everywhere and it was so easy for an adult to grab one for an easy birthday or Christmas present!