The process of building a Simple Crystal Radio
Crystal Radio Build Article from Mechanix Illustrated December 1970
I chose a build article “Build the Original Radio” – this is one of the simplest radio, but I do not consider it the original radio, mainly because you need a broadcast radio before you can use a receiver…….
![](https://www.snapwhole.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Crystal-Radio-1-Lead.png)
So I wanted to experiment with crystal radios, and I wanted to start with a basic crystal radio, I found this article from Mechanix Illsustrated, and I decided this would be my first crystal radio
It just happened that my wife bought a box of oatmeal that was made of cardboard and reminded me of the oatmeal boxes meant to be used for this radio, so I knew it was time to build
I started with winding the coil, Instead of using magnet wire, I used Cat6 solid wire, its 26 gauge wire with a plastic coating, will it work as well as magnet wire? I predict that is will, but that’s what these experiments are all about!
Lots of effort required to separate Cat 6 individual wires, first strip the outer jacket, and get 4 pairs of wires, now to separate the pairs by hand, very time consuming, but the wire is free, left over from a wiring job I did a few years ago
I punched two holes in the Oats container, threaded the wire in and out of the whole to act as an anchor, and started wrapping the coil, it helps to straighten the wire before winding
Crystal Radio Build Article from Mechanix Illustrated December 1970