Radio Broadcast (May 1923-Oct 1923)

The Set the Boy and His Dad Built 213 Broadcast reception is very erratic. It is not always the powerful stations which have been heard through the greatest distance. One night they picked up WHAK, a twenty-watt station 570 miles away in West Virginia and the next night Dad listened to WBL, a fifty-watt station, 1 545 miles away in Anthony, Kansas. Do you who live in the Central States ever stop to think what a fortunate location you enjoy? You can just tune in to the different stations in every direction around you, while radio fans on the Eastern edge of the country can listen-in on only half of the horizon, for not many people have stations that can get Europe. One night, the boy started for bed and some time later, Dad, not having heard the usual cheery "Good-night," went up to investigate. Lo and behold, the boy had a regular loudspeaker working. He was stretched out on two chairs, with his feet on the radiator, phones on his ears, sound asleep and snoringlikea saw-mill. Ma wanted to understand code and now each evening at suppertime, while preparing the evening meal, she keeps one eye on the clock so as not to be tardy at the receiver when Uncle Jack starts sending slow code from WGI. Now, when Dad and Ma are listening to a concert and code comes slamming in to the exclusion of all else, Ma doesn't mind at all, but listens to the dah-dit-dah and smiles while Dad sits by in a spirit of resignation. Did you ever have a radio ghost in your house? One night Dad was roused from sound slumber by Ma, who said, " There's a queer noise downstairs." Dad didn't hear anything for a few moments, then all at once there came the sound of a telegraph ticker; a few taps and then silence, a few more taps and silence. The boy had a practice set, but he was sound asleep, so Dad made a trip downstairs to investigate. On a table was a dry-cell lying near a telegraph ticker. Suddenly, while Dad stood still, looking and listening, the instrument began clicking. Not a hand near it. A few taps and then silence. Dad thought it about time for the ghost to go to bed, so he carefully looked the outfit over and found that while there was one wire connected between the battery and the ticker, the second wire was disconnected at one end but lying in such a way that a slight vibration of the building would cause the wire to make a contact and the ticker would momentarily operate. Removing the wires laid the ghost, and Ma and Dad slumbered quietly the rest of the night. Dad usually joins the boy at the radio set for a while every night before retiring. No matter how sleepy or tired he is, a few minutes' listening-in brightens him right up, but oh how aggravating are those faint indistinct announcements that can't be brought in! Just aggravating enough to make Dad want some radiofrequency amplification. You will see by the photo of the set that the controls are in such positions as to cause a great deal of trouble from body capacity. This was avoided to a certain extent by slipping a brass tube about two and one-half inches long over the detector bulb and connecting the brass to the ground wire. This arrangement made the set more stable, but several stations previously heard are now dumb, so Dad removed the brass tube in order to have another try at those stations. From the operation of the boy's receiver, Dad is firmly convinced that the best way to avoid trouble from body capacity is to use long shafts on the controls, preferably of nonmetallic material. A friend of Dad's extended the shaft of a grid variometer and placed on it a talking machine disc record for a dial. This arrangement gave excellent results as it avoided the body capacity effects, and the large dial gave a very sensitive control of the instrument, permitting the tuning-in of stations whose broadcast was formerly nothing but noises. THE BEST WAY TO AVOID BODY CAPACITY Of the calls heard, the worst mix-up was when two stations were alternating their programs and announcements: WHN, Ridgewood, Long Island, and WEAG, Edgewood, Rhode Island. The two kinds of wood and islands certainly had everyone puzzled.