Dr Stiffler SEC Replications?

[kcarring]

Found a genuine oldy worldy metal cased 2N2222A last night Am intending to see if there is a difference to a regular plastic new fangled one.

Thanks Slider. I tried JLN's negistor experiment, and it worked, using metal can 2N2222A's. Not sure how to apply it though. I would gladly support the Doctor and buy a board, but his site said no international orders, and I'm in Canada. I came off the slopes just in time, but missed buying this by 2 second and $2 today. That was a steal!

I also found this page useful, for winding 100 turns on an inductor core, measuring the L value on an LCR meter, then turning around winding the number of turns (calculated from the found AL value and #100) to make a choke of desired inductance:
Inductor DIY


Tonight I plaid around with my latest attempt. I employed this:

GIMMICK CAPACITOR
GIMMICK CAPACITORS by SM0VPO

[Slider2732]

@ NickZ - I would say the L3 pigtail is very important, when tuning with RF. Even the slightest couple of mm's of a cut and some crystal radio setups quit receiving. All relates to 1/4 waves as I understand it. But also more, perhaps, like the 1.094MHz thinking instead of a flat 1MHz. You may have most of a circuit running at 13MHz, yet the L3 has a pigtail length to bring it to 12.879MHz, aint gonna work.
As witnessed in kcarrings recent videos, he had it spot on, snipped the pigtail and boom, all gone.


@kcarring That cap method is very very cool !
The FM receiver that Lidmotor linked to calls for an 18pF.

The dinosaur 2N2222A tests showed it to be a weird little thing and not at all as I expected. The original tranny on the emulation SEC was an STS5343, all components for that one having come from a CRT monitor (150uH and 120uH vertical mini Bedini looking coils as L1 and L2). With the click of a piezo lighter, that one fires up and stays on, from a 1.2V Ni-MH.
The 2N2222A in its place gave a brief flash of the LED each time the lighter was clicked, but that was all I tried an aluminium block on the L1 as previously used on other builds and other tricks...zip, nadda, nothing, just that flash each time.
I think it's more a case of the dead parrot sketch on Monty Python than anything. The transistor was found hanging off some previously discarded years old experiment anyway when I found it in a box.

However, a telephone handset speaker and a 512pF variable cap were employed in other tests tonight, with good results. Though, to be honest, I had a naive thought that I may be able to tune to radio stations
Well, the var cap was put across the L3. The speaker had 1 wire to 1.5V battery ground, the other wire to the STS5343 Base. Turning the cap produced an area of greater LED brightness than previously seen...but also, a hissing from the speaker when held to the ear. The pitch of the sound didn't change, but the loudness did, in keeping with LED brightness.
So, output appears to be a function of transistor Base voltage, not of frequency changes to the Base.
All may be normal, but just thought would pass it along

[slayer007]

In this video I'm trying to find the SRF of the smaller coils.
When doing this make sure the wire comming off your coils is the same.

The coil with the SRF @ 20 MHz Had a RF @ 14.6 MHz when ran in the exciter.

SRF Exciter 3 - YouTube

[Slider2732]

I picked up a Craftsman 82139 after watching your first SRF video
The model has Hz, even though not exact to the one you use.
(from Sears, for $1.15 after using my wife's K-Mart rewards points lol)

Your circuit hasn't been built yet, but I tried the method on a self made SEC 18. Seems that i'm running at around 600kHz with no load, then the frequency jumps to around 2.1MHz with an LED on AV plug or other loading. Is that correct ? that the frequency changes by such amounts.
It seems from those tests that the exact loading is needed within calculations for the required 13MHz running range.

[slayer007]

I picked up a Craftsman 82139 after watching your first SRF video
The model has Hz, even though not exact to the one you use.
(from Sears, for $1.15 after using my wife's K-Mart rewards points lol)

Your circuit hasn't been built yet, but I tried the method on a self made SEC 18. Seems that i'm running at around 600kHz with no load, then the frequency jumps to around 2.1MHz with an LED on AV plug or other loading. Is that correct ? that the frequency changes by such amounts.
It seems from those tests that the exact loading is needed within calculations for the required 13MHz running range.

No I wouldnt think it would jump around that much but I guess it could.
Dr Stifflers circuit can run on multiple frequency.It way look like stair steps comming down from the strongest signal.
For some reason the two signals might be close to the same strength till you put a load on it.

[b_rads]

Mag Amp

@slider, @lidmotor
As you guys have been working with the radio circuits, I came across this video while working on the magnetic amplifier circuit. This is only a 3 minute video and around the 2 minute mark he is showing the magnetic amplifier interfacing with a radio circuit. Not certain if this applies to your work or not, interesting nonetheless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBX1-POuJMw&feature=related

Brad S

[Lidmotor]

Youtube videos

@slider, @lidmotor
As you guys have been working with the radio circuits, I came across this video while working on the magnetic amplifier circuit. This is only a 3 minute video and around the 2 minute mark he is showing the magnetic amplifier interfacing with a radio circuit. Not certain if this applies to your work or not, interesting nonetheless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBX1-POuJMw&feature=related

Brad S

I have seen that video before but I forgot about the crystal radio amp part. I wonder if we could get a volume bump just using our homemade batteries. No transistors to worry about.

Here is another video that I found dealing with using RF signals for power. The only thing that bothers me about his method is that he is using the house mains ground. As we all have found out by now -----the mysterious energy can come from there and light up an LED pretty easy. We have to be really careful about that. It can lead to a false conclusions.

electricity from radiowaves 3 - YouTube

I am continuing on with my "traditional" radio research at the basic level and it is filling in some of the blanks. I am getting very tired of listening to "talk" radio stations on the AM band though.

Here is my "Wave Trap" experiment with the crystal radio. It helped.

Wave Trap filter for crystal radio.ASF - YouTube

@Slayer
You might be way ahead of the rest us now that you have found a simple way to match the resonance of 3 coils. Maybe you can replicate what Ben did with his 3 coil setup. That would be a major step forward ----if you can rule out a feed from a known power source.

Stiffler 3 coil replication in low power excitation mode - YouTube

Lidmotor

[Slider2732]

We can view those spectacular RF lighting videos a little differently nowadays.
However, i'm going to replicate what he did, without the house ground and because of the now known interference free short ground outside the window here.
i did find something related with the Craftsman 82139 Hz meter and first crystal radio...the outdoor aerial initially came in past our fusebox and although a foot or so away from it, the readings were always between 59.97Hz and 60.01Hz !
The aerial was rerouted !
Oh, and, I found one of those circuits recently, where my LED's came from in similar experiments. Folks were asking what type of LED's were in the squareish bank of 15 that I used. Here's that one, cased and decased. You get 2 each of red, green yellow and blue in them. Neat little flashing light things really, with the lights seeming to go off into the distance because of a '1 way' mirror on either side.

[mikrovolt]

Thankyou lidmotor for the xtal radio videos,
beside the traps, the Q multipliers usefulness has always been a controversy
with radio designers.

In this article about half way down shows the 1912 MH Dodds Reciever Details.

Each component enclosed in a wooden cabinet individually set up and arranged for best performance. This was the era where the passive system began using more power such as the edison battery in picture. There was no ground plane.
DoddStation

In 1925 the radio components merged into one unit had the classic black bakelite front panel but still did not use ground plane.
Colin B Kennedy Receivers

Moving to the present day and looking at the electrical field of of a capacitor.
(such as between two aluminum blocks) referred to as elements.
As you swing the plates (blocks) apart in an arc to 180 degrees
you form a dipole. This tendency toward duplicity arises naturally.
Electromagnetic-wave-components

This leads to a question, How to use stray capacitance ?
I am using a counterpoise such as Dr Stiffler has suggested.
It is made of #12 stranded house electrical hook-up wire is 24 inches long.
It is much better than the # 18 standard clip lead.

[Slider2732]

Horrible picture and i'll have to write up the details when I work through the component wiring, but...

WOOOOOT !!!!





-update -
I tried directly to the ground wire outside and the positive end held in the hand. There was a partial illumination of the blue LED. The LED is brighter on the crystal radio, the positive being to the junction of the negative side of the diode and aerial.
2 AM radio loopsticks are on 1 long (3") ferrite piece. The aerial comes in to the left one, it's other end is disconnected.
The other loopstick coil has both sides linking to a conventional enough '102' ceramic capacitor and germanium diode, then out to a telephone speaker to listen in.
I'll have to try knocking the power off to the house it seems.
Even then, who's to say that next doors wiring wouldn't be supplying some form of ground current ?

[xee2]

Here is my "Wave Trap" experiment with the crystal radio. It helped.

@ Lidmotor

The wave trap can also be used to boost strength of a single frequency. From web page you referenced:

"Another use (I always like dual use projects) for this device is a MW signal booster. Connect the terminals to an antenna and ground. Then place the internal loop of the radio within the field of the wave trap. As you tune the wave trap, you will hear a large increase in the signal. I can hear Toronto which is nearly 500km from me during the day."

The amount of signal boost depends on Q of wave trap resonator. This is actually the most common use of a resonator. I think you will find this use very interesting.

Also, from: Terk AM Advantage - C. Crane Company (800) 522-8863

"You can also use it without the wires, and improve your AM reception just by setting the antenna near your AM radio (through a process called inductive coupling)."

[Lidmotor]

Lots to learn --not enough time

@All
Thanks for all the info on the "Radio Quest". I don't know about you guys but this is really interesting stuff. Especially the history of what happened and when. There isn't enough time to absorb it all. I'm cherry picking through it trying to find what related to Dr. Stiffler's work. The probelm is that it ALL relates to his work. He wasn't trained as a carpenter or an accountant. He is a Phd prepared RF engineer. Even though his discovery of SEC was somewhat of an accident--- his developement of it is grounded in a solid understanding of how a radio works. That goes all the way back to when he was a kid fixing em.

Soooo. The quest goes on. Maybe tommorrow I'll try to get an LED to glow off the crystal radio. I strung a long antenna today to get a better signal. Has anyone tried taking a strong FM station signal and firing it at a SEC? A ways back I think Dr. Stiffler suggested trying that.

Lidmotor

[Lidmotor]

A tiny project for Slider----The MK484 radio

@Slider
I am building this radio today.

MK484 1.5 volt AM Radio IC Driving a Ceramic Earphone on eBay!

It uses a MK484 radio chip that will function on as little as 1 volt and .3 mA. I got the whole kit off Ebay. In my search for what was exactly in the chip I came across this web site----- and this "match box" version has your name written all over it.

TRF Radios 1, Ferranti ZN414, MK484, Matchbox Radio, ZN415, ZN416, TA7642, HAC Radio

@All
The reason that I am so interested in this is that it deals with amplification of an RF signal and how that gets done. In Dr. Stiffler's last post at the other forum, he states that a number of people are very close to a PSEC replication but that some people are really going off in the wrong direction. My direction might be right or wrong but this sure has been a facinating side trip so far.



Lidmotor

[Slider2732]

@Lidmotor - The matchbox radio saw a laugh in acknowledgement. Yep, that's what I would do !
In fact, not knowing how difficult it is to buy a simple box of matches here in the USA, it was only recently that I bought 3 boxes of Diamond 'greenlight' matches. They're to make a scale Wardenclyffe tower and the boxes might well find themselves radio fitted. The Wardenclyffe project has been held up, due to financing and lack of good materials, wait, that was the original too...mine's really been held up due to bug eyeing at how many matches it's gonna take lol

If you look at the Matchbox radio and then squint ones eyes at the SEC circuitry, you may imagine combining several same elements. Input battery on the bottom right, tuner coil top left. The transistor sits with a resistor supplying bias (to 680K, not far from 1Meg). There is reference to a trimmer variable capacitor. Several small value capacitors and a larger one as rail smoother. The circuit board of the Matchbox focuses on the effects of the trace areas underneath too.
So, as an introduction to building similarly sized and for appreciation of Dr. Stifflers layout, while making something not intended for SEC, the Matchbox radio can deliver much experience. Very very nice find there !
It could also be imagined that if enough tinkering were made, the circuit could draw in enough power to supply that 1V 3mA need. A calculator solar panel on the top of the Matchbox would suffice for self running, then reduce to none needed.

Last night saw a focus on improving the Q of my crystal radio that lit an LED. I can now get the LED to light with no ground (which was 100% needed to happen), but also am finding that the simple addition of a 1970's analog 'Signal' meter to be invaluable, runs in series with 1 speaker wire. By watching the needle, changes have been made and assessed. My previous 'best' with another radio was a '1' out of '5' on the meter, now it's up to 1 1/2. Whatever the unknown dB scale is of the meter, it does form a horse and carrot with the wish to get right up there to peak the meter.
I'd think that the firing of such FM signals, as described, could be seen on that simple bit of 'test equipment'.

And, here was something. I dug out the 15 LED bank used in previous experiments in this thread and experimented with the homemade SEC-18, built from parts found on a CRT monitor. Power was a 1.5V AAA. The outdoor crystal radio aerial was connected to the input of the LED bank, the AV plug end. My hand held one of the 2 output pins, which come from the negative and positive sides of the LED's. By placing the LED's underside connections at the junction of the L3 and RF bead, not only did the LED's light very brightly indeed, but the white LED on the circuit became blindingly bright !
It's not a real SEC-18 and it's only an observation, but it was all quite startling.

[Lidmotor]

AM radio using the MK484 IC chip

I made a simple AM radio today using that Mk484 integrated circuit chip. It worked really good and will actually run on a homemade Mg/Cu cell. You have to use an earphone so for this video I connected to my homemade amplifier.

Simple AM radio using MK484 IC - YouTube

@Slayer
For some reason I am not getting enough power to light up an LED using my crystal radio. It is probably my antenna. I'll keep working on it.

Lidmotor