[BC] Our Wild TECH Youth - more memories

[WFIFeng@aol.com]

In a message dated 07/11/2005 7:29:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
clewis at sto.ibb.gov writes:

>         Those kids at the school for the blind were incredible.  They
>          always amazed me.  I have stories about that too.

I have a friend who is legally blind. He's probably forgotten more about 
computers than I've learned! The guy is truly amazing. Does it all via a Braille 
display and text-to-speech that sounds like an auctioneer on speed! ;) He's my 
go-to guy whenever I have a computer problem. Sharp as a tack.

He also ran a rather powerful AM station from his apartment in upstate NY 
some years ago. Uncle Charlie showed up, and since he was blind, they only gave 
him a stern warning, and that was all. He promptly dismantled it and that was 
the end.

>          A couple of years later,I built a little more sophisticated
>          carrier current transmitter with crystal control that used two
>          crystals, a story in itself,  and put it to more legitimate use
>          in my college dorm.   But that's another long story.

Ah-ha! :) Years back, when I was still living at home in Bridgeport, (1985-7) 
I wanted to be able to listen to CT's only Christian FM station, up in 
Middletown. Problem was, their signal was absolutely undetectable to any portables, 
not even my car radio could get it. I COULD pick it up with a 5-element FM 
yagi on the roof, tho! So that fed a Declo car radio, carefully aligned & peaked 
to their signal. That in turn fed my dual-crystal micro-power AM transmitter. 
(Built for this very purpose!) The x-tals came out of dead CB rigs. I picked a 
pair that gave me 630Khz (a somewhat quiet freq) and that was it. It wasn't 
much of a signal, maybe 10 milliwatts, but it was enough to enable me to hear 
that station on any radio in the house. I still have that little transmitter in 
one of my junk drawers. ;) It uses something like 5 or 6 2N3094's and a pair 
of ferrite loopsticks scavenged from dead portables. The x-tals run at their 
fundamental freq, mixed and fed thru a band-pass, then modulated & amplified.

The antenna was only a wire strung across the basement ceiling, worked 
against the AC outlet's ground. (I had my workshop down there, so that's why it was 
in the basement.) It sounded decent, considering the FM station's signal was 
barely giving me about 40db s/n on good days, less than 10 on bad.

Willie...