Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

The Amateur Radio Laboratory Its Equipment and Us:s By ZEH BOUCK IT WAS only in recent years that I was initiated into the delights and facilities of a wellequipped radio lab. Until then I had been content (where ignorance is bliss) to struggle along with brace and bit, borrowed for occasions, a soldering iron, a can of Nokorode and the kitchen tubs when available. Being anything but a mechanic, indeed 1 preferred designing unlimited transformers to cutting a single piece of core for one, I was almost entirely dependent on uncertain electrical supply stores for parts and sundries, bent and twisted to the proper shapes. Thus it was not remarkable that the game was seldom worth the candle, and my homemade apparatus, possibly well designed but poorly constructed, was often less efficient than manufactured instruments purchased at a saving in time if not of money. My radio tests and experiments were always limited by our neighbors' sense of humor and the physical characteristics of a city apartment; they found a meagre expression in spark and Tesla coils. About the time of honeycomb sets my radio common-sense, spurred by financial considerations, determined me to buy my apparatus only, and to table the experimental and constructional end until circumstances warranted a lavish layout. My determination was stimulated by a friend, an electro-chemical engineer, who desiring to take up radio, came to me for aid in selecting his original receiving set. His knowledge of the subject was then altogether theoretical (he knew high frequency A.C.), and so was willing to act on any advice I might offer. Realizing that he possessed an electrical laboratory with some constructional facilities, I suggested that we make the set (I had a pet design in mind) rather than purchase it outright. He welcomed the idea and promised to procure the necessary parts which I had enumerated in a long list. But alas! 1 failed to caution him on the correlation of sizes and similar details that my own experience had given me cause to respect, and his final conglomeration of radio in the making was one that would have stumped a better mechanic i than I to put together! I remarked sarcastically that the three sixteenths variometer shafts were hardly good ! fits for knobs and dials drilled with a quarterinch hole. "Oh, that's all right," my friend was undaunted. "I've got some quarter-inch rod around here; I'll drill it out and make sleeves!" I next complained of the inferior jacks he had bought, commenting on how poorly their ; brass ends would show up against the nickleplating on the panel. He merely smiled quietly : and a quarter of an hour later they were nickleplated and buffed! I then preserved peace until on hooking up I found that my friend had supplied me with number twelve hard-drawn wire, which, in its adamant quality, was as difficult to work as a high-tension bus-bar. I struck then and there, but the engineer, not perturbed in the least, made some reference to an electric furnace, and taking the wire with him, left the room. Before I had cleaned the soldering iron, he returned with the wire soft and pliable. He had annealed it! We worked steadily but without rush or overexertion, and the afternoon of the second day saw the set complete and working! The apparatus combined long and short wave regenerative sets with a detector and two stage amplifier; an installation with a market value in excess of one hundred and fifty dollars, and which we had constructed for less than half that amount. II In the radio laboratory I would first emphasize the shop. While electrical equipment is also of primary importance, the apparatus itself more than justifies, indeed demands, a well-stocked workroom. In the average lab consisting of two rooms, the workshop is separate from the operating quarters. Of this type is the laboratory of Messrs. Howell and Woodrow whose call, 2AOO, is familiar to New York operators. A section of the shop