by I'm a third year undergraduate at the university of Canterbury NZ, and
I need some help.
I decided to do a comms paper this year, it has one project : design
and make your own radio. Fine easy you say... except that the marker likes
original ideas.
Last year one of the students taking the course spent a fairly
substantial sum of money to build a radio complete with surround sound etc.
etc. He got about 90%, but a smart young fellow built a crystal set and got
92%. The reason he got such a high mark was because he made his own diode out
of some sought of crystal he requisitioned from physics.
So my problem is to find an original idea for a radio which falls into
these catergories (in order of importance).
1: It needs to be original, I thought of extending the idea of the
crystal set a little by making my own tuning capacitor out of some of those old
fashioned razor blades (has anyone tried this?). Someone built a 'Co-hearer'
radio last year, that got good marks. Does anyone know of any unusaul am
receivers (the older the technology the better), or know of any books
describing early radio recievers?
2: The idea has to be reasonably easy to understand by an ignorant
undergrad, and has to be reasonably easy to implement.
3: I'd prefer it if I don't have to take out a mortgage ;)
Cheers,
Stephen Simpson
PS. Please email my elec account as I read it more frequently.