How to Make a Foxhole Radio
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- Опубліковано 20 жов 2024
- During World War II, GIs in the field built really amazing simple radios to listen too. These were made with materials that they could get their hands on and were small enough to carry around in a big pocket. You can modify this design if you want to set it up so that it's tuneable too! To see all the plans, go to makezine dot com slash podcast!
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jesus i watched this video in 2007 once..... remembered it.... and found it again 14 years later
What does JESUS have to do with this?
@@sallycarroll6329a lot of
@@sallycarroll6329wow you're truly a very intelligent individual
@@sallycarroll6329 Alright Sally, time for arts and crafts...
Heating the razor blade creates a dioxide layer on the blade (2 materials) which turns the razor to a detector (diode). I think kind of that layer is also being used at the gate of mosfet transistors.
We did it with my friend when I was 12 years old. Although we cannot get sound from the radio, I am an Electronic engineer candidate right now :)
I bet you could get one to work now.
i made one when i was 8. It is not a big deal.
@@25_26 congrats mate im happy for you
How did it go? Your uni I mean
Just a candidate? Not even an engineer?
12 years and the quality of the video is amazing
This was the very first UA-cam video I ever watched, oh the memory's
Hahahahaha
I watched Me at the zoo. Gives me the willys to know what you watched. Its so interesting. Im going to like this comment and have my followers all like it too so you get money from UA-cam.
@@UpcomingJedi what lol
I actually had to check the upload date. The production value is so high!
Did you watch it while you had the movie “Hart’s War” on pause…. Like I do now? 😂😂
This video is over 9 years old, becoming a great classic crystal set project video.
13 now 😂
@@dixiegracebrown SIXTEEN NOW 💯🔥
@@agostinodublino138722 now! 😅😳
Great Brie, Another project to do with my great grandson. Thanks so much.
pierre from New Mexico
I like how clear and easy to understand your vid was with a bit of history thrown in.
I made one just like this over 50 years ago. Fun to see it resurrected! The reason the 'blued' blades work better is because they have a selenium coating. You can put the point of the safety pin directly on the blade with those... no pencil required. Thanks for this vid!
The problem you had with the Razor blade was the rust resistant coating that comes on modern metal to make it last longer. you can burn it off or scratch off the coating with sand paper
They did this in Masters of the Air! Awesome video.
This is exactly the kind of plan I was looking for. Years ago I found plans in a real old boy scout manual that used the cardboard tube and cats whisker, but it used a galena crystal. I think it also used varnish coated wire and the varnish was removed from an arc that the tuning arm traveled.
I love the emergency siren in the back ground wile your heating the rasor
All you need are these.... Later in the video.. and these and these and these and these and these and these.
Cubejam And in your case... You'll need a brain.
Cubejam LMFAO
Learned to make them in the scouts back in the 70's.
Props for showing the entire learning curve, failures and all. It helps us understand the diagnosis process better. Thanks.
I tried to make one of these a while back with a kit and couldn't get it to work. Really tough for some reason.
Bre I'm glad that you actually showed some "failures" along the way on this one. Keeping it real and showing that electronics aren't always a perfect science :)
HERE HERE, WELL SAID.
That sound quality's pretty impressive! It's a shame you weren't able to get a music station. People don't know AM can sound GREAT because radio manufacturers use really cheap components and roll off the lows & highs. Great job!
You MUST have a CRYSTAL earpiece/ headphones! This is crucial to the functioning of the foxhole radio!!!!
No, the high impedance headphones for other stuff works OK on this.
Like a MacGyver! AWESOME!!!
My brother did this when I was a little kid ,and it worked! 5-yr old learned electronics! Gotta love big brothers (even when they hit you for touching their stuff).
2:33 they found you, bree...
This is extremely well made for 2007.
Just wonderful
I made one of these once when I was in grade school. I bought a kit and put it all together. I was super proud of myself!
Haha sound like mike francesa when he played the radio station!
I and my father did it when I was young, in the sixties. Very nice to see it again.
XD trying calling in and say "I'M USING A RADIO DONE BY GI'S IN WWII!" "Who is this guy?" "I CAN'T HEAR YOU,THIS RADIO IS SOFT!"
"...-,-"
I made this 14 years ago when i was a child. It really works.
I used slightly different things but the principle is the same. Its fun and sometimes usefull in certain situations
better product than the makerbots
the razor blade and the cat-whisker or in this case the pencil "rectifies" the signal that is received. You can use an old Diode that just about anything electronic has a number of. The part usually has a symbol on like this →⊢
Page not listed or has been moved?!?!?!
Learn nothing there!
late,but:cdn.makezine.com/make/wp_foxholeradio.pdf
This was one of the best videos on a diy radio to date!
Heard the toilet paper companies are getting rid of the tubes. Then what?
buy a radio
Easy, measure up an existing tube while you can, and make a replica tube out of printer/copier paper. Or, there is nothing to say you can't use plastic waste pipe, or even a small medicine or drink bottle. The tube doesn't even have to be of any specific material. You could even get more adventurous and dispense with the paper tube altogether and build a simple frame antenna, but I digress.
Great Job. Your dad, McGyver,would be proud. I really like the fact that you actually go through some mistakes and show people it's not a one shot deal. Thanks for sharing. Great Post.
Warning: This may turn out to be a Fox Talk Radio :)
That's still a FOX Hole radio... Not to be confused with an Ass Hole radio...
Yes the number of coils will affect the tuning frequency.
Using a ground maximizes the potential difference between the radio wave and ground. In other words it makes the signal bigger.
Him lighting the torch with sirens in the background is absolute comedy gold
Thank you really, I finally understand the simple radio structure.
I built that today and it worked ! Thanks for posting
This is really, really nicely done. I've not seen a razor blade used as a detector before.
Thanks!
Nice! Glad to see you had a fire extinguisher on hand.
Yes u were correct about the type of Metal Treatment. I think its called "negative resistance". The coil is the antenna. The razor blade is the oscillator.
it is the rust spots that make the good connections.. different size rust spots get different stations. you can get blue blades from crystal radio parts supply.
bluing is a process of heating and cooling that not only strengthens the metal but also does something to the internal electron configuration.
AWESOME! It works good! It's neat how the heated blade makes it work as a diode.
Cool project. Easy to make tunable. Just move the paper clip on the right to the center of the coil and stretch out the paper clip so that it rests on the coil with spring like tension. Make the coil almost twice as long. Use the edge of a metal file and remove about an 1/8" strip of enamel coating from the magnet wire. Tune by moving the paper clip across the coil to tap the coil in different places. :)
Hey, we love your video! My son and I enjoyed it very much and the best part, it worked! Keep up the fun stuff. Many thanks!
nice yesterday i started making this, my dad had some old world war 2 german razor blades so i took one. I made my coil with 300 turns, and used my washing line as an antenna and it works GREAT!
@yasowhatup it is the air capacitance of the air coil. it is very low, however, the inductance of the open air coil is also very very low. thanks for you question
You can use pipe for tap water, you can use a gas pipe, you can dig a whole in your garden and dig in a big metal plate to which you connect the ground lead wire.
Totally awesome and simple. Beginner hams would totally dig this. Perhaps a safer substitute for the burned razorblade, but otherwise, I totally dig it.
great video, reminds me of my younger days and just getting started. you also wear you shirt the way i did then...and well now.
The magnet wire has a coating on it that will prevent it from making the connection. If you still want to use the wire to connect the paper clips, take a lighter and hold the end of the wire over the flame until you see the coating burn away. It only takes a few seconds.
I'm a radio collector, thanks! I'll try this. Cool stuff.
This is so high quality for 2007 damn
@fifthStitch The ground wire is for preventing you from getting shocked from static electricity. You COULD run it without one but it you could get electrocuted or at the very least zapped when the electric components built up enough electricity.
You could just attach the ground wire to anything metal that will absorb the electricity.
The pencil lead / razor blade combo is a basic diode, allowing the current to flow in only one direction.
The razor blades had to be rusty or corroded so the contact point ( a bent wire or safety pin) becomes a diode. A very good diode was a green penny or other corroded coin. I finally did it with a galena crystal which is like the tiny crystal in a 1n34 diode. Which works very well.
what a nice project, i will try this sometime.
Real cool! I watched it twice and that looks like a real cool weekend project.
i like how, as you were getting ready to fire up the torch to heat up the razor blade, the sirens got closer.
Thanks for video.I did what you did and all I can get is a pretty loud earthing sound like a zzzzzz . I have salvaged copper wire from a transformer which is thicker. shall I use a rusty razor and blue it ? Thanks
Cool !! I had heard of 'cats whisker' detectors but up until seeing this I had no idea what they were. Thank You.
Thank you. A question re the schematic: Where is the PDF mentioned at min 1:34?
you are the man! a "macgyver" radio...that it!i finally found my jota-joti project topic!
thanks!
what is the differenect between foxhole and Crystal radio? if you have a razor blade diode, do u need a capacitator?
Great video. One of the best I've seen about the foxhole radio.
The drill press will work really well, just reduce the speed. You don't show the entire press, but it looks like the type that has an adjustable drive belt. If it is, just move the belt to a lower speed (a speed you would typically use when drilling metal).
@lukasm14 this device shown is an AM radio. 102.6 MHZ is in the comercial FM band, where transmissions are in a different format. That Format is Frequency Modulation. Amplitude Modulation is "detected" by the diode action of the "cat's whisker" or, razor blade/pencil tip combination. Frequency Modulation, is deteted by a more complex method, and requires more complex equipment.
Sounds suprisingly good.
That is soooooo kool!
I built a superheterodyne radio in high school and that took days in class to solder up.
I didn't know that this was possible though!
Oh well back to my 3d printing duties
how did you tune the coil? did you remove varnish or add taps?? I don't understand
I wish you would slow down and take things step by step, but I definitely want to do this sometime. was there a power connector in there somewhere?
would wire straight from an electric motor work?
BTW, Bre, The station you received was WFAN on 660 kHz. Happy Listening
Where did you get the earpiece? What could you do for an improvised speaker?
Dude! This is really cool! But I gotta ask, what is it in your opinion, that makes the heated up , blue razor blade better than a normal, almost stainless razor blade? i'm not disputing, just curious what YOU think the difference is! I am gonna tinker with this over the next few days, although I live out in the boondocks of central Arkansas, there are of course AM station everywhere. One other question-how long, roughly, should this long wire antennae be? 3 feet? 8 feet? Good tutorial!
EXCELLENT!! Plus- I was glad to see the fire extinguisher, in the background, when heat-treating the razor-blade. Safety First!
Nicely done! By the way, the talk radio is Mike Francesa of WFAN in NYC. One of the smartest sports reporters ever. He's syndicated, so not sure what station it was.
I live in Africa so I didn't really expect to hear anything as there were few radio stations: what I heard was electric sparks in the earphones though. Thanks to you, I will redo the experiment.
i remember over 10 years ago when I watched this, there was a lot i didn't understand from this video
The wire that is connected between the paper clips and the razor blade--is that also the magnet wire or a different kind of wire?
Great! The world desperately needs people like you.
"Blue" razor blades had a silicon coating so they wouldn't rust. This was in the days before stainless steel was cheap enough for blades. You can still find a few in antique shops and on-line.
Are you saying that with just the parts shown here, and no amplifier you can get sound through a speaker? Please let me know when you post that video. I'd be very interested to see that.
Great story & project!
Thank you Bre!
btw also if you use an audio jack and connect to + and - terminals you can use your computer speakers. Which is way more convenient as you can adjust the volume and you dont have to use the earphone
Nice! I made one of those for my History of Broadcasting class back in college.
I am going to try this one for sure, but one question. How do you change channels?
Rofl the Cat6 wire
On a serious note, bluing is a process by which carbon steel (non-stainless steel) is coated with a specific iron oxide that inhibits rust slightly, but even more importantly, allows the metal to hold oil better to further prevent rust. The result is an item with the strength/etc. of carbon steel and the ability to not rust easily like stainless steel. Another widely used option in guns, but less so in blades, is Parkerization, which is similar but grayish and phosphate-based.
Similar principle, they would wind wire on nails dipping the nail in wax after each set of turns then they would put the nails in a can and lightly cover the open end of the can with foil they usually got from candy wrappers. There's also a way to make a small speaker with charcoal and a small metal cup they would make on a hot stove.
cool video,my uncle who passed away a few years ago like making this kind of stuff
Hey I have the exact same flame torch!
Cool project too, UA-cam can be quite educational at times!
I have some pear car antennas and a speaker I removed form an old baby monitor, would I use these to improve the quality of the radio?
I did some research and found out you can change the length of the antenna or coil, or install a tuning capacitor.
Im doing a radio project in my product design course n i thot this would be cool to make just as a bit of research or somethin. What did you use as the power supply?
you don't need too much heat to blue the steel. A simple pocket lighter will ussually do the trick.
I used to build these as a kid. They are an excellent way to learn about how radio signals can power devices.
How many turns/windings of the coil wrapped around the toilet paper tube?
500 degrees is the temperature steel turns blue.
If you heat steel to red (called super heat) and let it slowly cool, the metal will be softened.
if you heat steel to red and quickly quench in water, the steel becomes very hard but brittle.
(crystalizes).
So, to get optimal strength, steel is first crystalized then shined up with abrasive and then reheated till blue. Blue is the strongest.
The quickest way is to quench in oil, which cools down to 500 and turns the object blue.
I did too, in the 4th or 5th grade, except I used a diode as a detector. I was always trying to improve the thing.
Ironically, I lived on the east coast then but I live near Mesa now.