To learn electronics in a different and effective way, and also get access to my personal electronic designs and inventions, click here: www.patreon.com/MrCarlsonsLab

@xcreeperify

5 жыл бұрын

a video suggestion id love to see is different techniques to make these type of ac hook ups safer. ie. converting to a 3 prong chassis ground plug. ive looked around and have found very little info on this. love your content i learn so much.

@sonus289

5 жыл бұрын

@@xcreeperify i agree that would be highly useable!!!

@Richie086

5 жыл бұрын

I love your videos! I just became a patreon this morning. keep up the good work!

@ugetridofit

4 жыл бұрын

So back in the day when they didn't have polarized plugs and connected two pieces of equipment together how did they know it was safe. I.E. connecting the output of a phonograph to this device here. Since the audio cable jacket is tied to the case on both ends if the power cable is flipped on one of the devices then you have a short between equipment. So how did the general public person with no knowledge of electronics keep from frying things.

@jimcarter6669

4 жыл бұрын

Excellent audio quality!

Paul, I had one of these, back in 1965. I ran a wire, out my bedroom window to my neighbors tree, about 120 feet away. I would load up my 45 record player, with records, and play it into this transmitter for hours, after school. My best friend lived about 5-blocks away, and he would dial it in! Then, one day, it just wouldn’t light up. Stuck it in a box, and mom chucked it, when I was in the USMC. Alas, it was fun while it lasted!

@JohnPiperBoots

5 ай бұрын

@jimpowell9205 - Semper Fi bro and Merry Christmas! I go back to the good old Radio Shack days, project kits 150 in one etc. My late father, an electronics engineer for USAF 30 years always got me into these type kits etc. Lots of memories with this stuff! To bad your mother tossed it in the garbage. Thanks for your story and service! Semper Fi USMC '75 - '81 OoohRah!

@jimpowell9205

5 ай бұрын

@@JohnPiperBoots I’m older………..67 - 71

Boy that brings back memories. Built one in the 50s. Had my own radio station in my neighborhood. I'm 73 now. Was talking to one of my neighbors who I hadn't seen for 60 years the other day and she asked me if I remembered being a DJ back then. Amazing this pops up on my internet coincidentally.

Mr Carlson, I am not an engineer nor do I know anything about electronics. I simply enjoy watching your content. You are so intelligent. I learn new words every video. Haha. 43 and still learning and entertained. Thanks

My friend built one in1964 and still broadcasts from it ! OMG, I can still remember his license: "Broadcast amplifier 83Y706 meets the FCC restricted radiation requirements under rule 15.204. Wow, how can I remember that?

Another Knight Kit from my youth! I seem to remember "accidentally" connecting one of those up to my 40 metre long-line and...oh, never mind. I also used to drive my mother crazy when she was trying to listen to Arthur Godfrey and I would interject some German polka music from a 78 rpm shellac record. That must have been about 1959.

@BillAnt

5 жыл бұрын

Also metal clothes lines make great (and long) antennas ;D

@sonofeloah

5 жыл бұрын

@@BillAnt LOL!!

@radiorick4975

5 жыл бұрын

You rascal you. In 1969 my father and I took a vacation to California from Texas. I had added a rear speakers to the 64 Ford to the am radio. In the crack of the rear seat was a wire splice. Out of San Francisco with my uncle Buster we went to Lake Tahoe. (First time I ever saw a Hemi CUDA) Buster would be singing away and I would touch the wires together. Buster would say Bobby what's wrong with your radio, dad had a funny look I don't know it's never done that. I am still blessed with my father. And my dear Mother. One of my father's stories is farmtown Bangs Texas a gentleman had his own little station played music. No running water no electricity but they had a battery powered receiver. Dad heard Hank Williams seven encores the Grand Ole Opry. We still go back and visit the 300 Acre Farm.

@BruceBoschek

5 жыл бұрын

@@radiorick4975 Great stories. We had Sears battery radio in the 1950s and up into the 1960s up in northern Wisconsin. My dad was a professional symphony musician, so no Hank Williams, but the news and Arthur Godfrey, Amos and Andy and Jack Benny. I got my education on that radio. it had an expensive 15 volt dry battery, as big as a cigar box. We also had no running water or electricity and only a pot-bellied wood stove. Life was good then, too.

@sulagodfrey-jensen813

4 жыл бұрын

Nice video. I would like to see you hook It up to a turntable or other source and then see how far it will broadcast into a real radio. I ran a similar device as a dorm radio station in college. Great fun!

I had one when I was a teenager! I am 73 now! My twin brother and I hooked up a long wire antenna and tested the range with a portable radio and were able to get 5 blocks in the neighborhood!!!

Yep, That was the “rig” Dad & I built for my youthful local radio station, albeit I added a long wire, which, as I mentioned in a comment on your post about your Gates Broadcast Xmtr, brought an FCC van cruising my neighborhood, in search of my errant unlicensed station. Knightkits & Heathkits put together on the kitchen table were my electronics “schooling” leading up to ham radio, TV repair, Bourns BioMed bench tech, arcade game tech, then EMI/RFI open field lab test tech with the advent of pc & mainframe computer hardware. An even more beautiful pix of your amazingly organized electronic Garden of Eden-out of camera range, of course, is a workbench covered with caps, resistors, half-breadboarded projects buried in a rat’s nest of spaghetti, smeared with rosin drips & burn marks as the smoke of a well used Weller Station wafts over it all...oh, sorry, I was looking at mine! 73’s, WB6U

I built one of these as a kid. I do remember the last part of the instructions where it says to attach the supplied wire to point X and said "this is your antenna DO NOT EXTEND this wire!" Needles to say the first thing I did was attach to my 100 foot longwire shortwave receive antenna and the second thing I did was walk around several blocks around the neighborhood listening for the signal (I ran a tape recorder into it). Went several blocks, and I learned how to couple the little pocket transistor radio to a telephone pole to bring it in.

Never had a Allied Knight kit transmitter of any kind, but I built a Knight stereo and a Knight Span Master. I am now 73 years old. I built the Span Master in 1962 when I was 16. I still have it ! !

@JohnAllen-gg1oz

5 жыл бұрын

I did too, around 1961. Also helped a friend build a Space Spanner.

@kendoty2463

Жыл бұрын

Span Master Cardboardy cabinet model; High Voltage on headphone connector ! ! !

I got one for Christmas in 1975 My sister and I would play news caster and weather report I would be in my room and her in her room Mine worked I was 11 Ended up in the Navy Advanced Electronic Went into Aerospace electronics on the LANTRN , Patriot middle project Then into consumer electronics as an audio video bench tech into teaching now back in the field as a remote service tech in Hospitals and Schools communication Made a life time career out of it Thanks mom and dad

You're making my life more fun just listening to you!

I was always interested in electronics. Went to college in 1989 initially to get an AS in electronics. Unfortunately i'm not THAT Mathletic and flunked out. Also, the teachers sucked. They were old at the end of their career and just didn't give a crap. They also couldn't teach in a way that showed you application. I went back for Computer aided design and several years later went back again for plastics. But electronics was always dear to me. 35 years after wanting a Ham radio license I studied and tested directly to General a couple weeks ago. The simple electrical theory rekindled my interest in it. Seeing these videos it's the first time in a long time that things make sense. If I had a teacher like you I probably would have hung with it and had a very different career.

WOW. I built this unit in about 1959 0r early 60's. We had hours of fun tricking friends with their own car radios into believing the police were coming thru their AM radio's. While sitting out under the apple tree at a table we had hours of fun letting other neighborhood kids hear themselves on AM radio. Thank you Mr Carlson

This video was a lot of fun! 😃 I'm a former broadcast engineer (age 60) & live in Germany. All if our AM srations were shut down over here in 2015. 😢😣 I always loved my AM rigs & hated working on FM. Bye! 🙋

We built a high school "rock radio" station (studio) and fed one of these Knight broadcasters way up in an attic space, near the roof - had about a 1 mile radius in reception. Big dreams back in the 60's !

nice find! elegant little circuit there, and at least the person who built it knew his ass from his elbows.

For such a minimalistic bit of kit, I'm impressed. Just look at that signal quality on that thing !!!!! Wow

I had the Ramsey Am Broadcast TX kit, fun to build and use for my local neighbors, they liked listening to me every evening. Miss the closure of Ramsey Kits!

Growing up near Chicago was always torn in my locality between Knight kit and Heath kit. My first kit was a Knight VTVM, saved up all summer 1961 between 8th grade and freshman high school.

This guy must be the most knowledgeable on youtube.

Had something like this when I was a kid and on a good night it would broadcast 21/2 to 3 blocks ! Good times !

Got mine from allied when i was a kid. my build did not look near as good as that. But it was my first build ever. I learned that caps hold a CHARGE! Did not work first off. It. fell on the floor . I though all was lost. Pluged it in and it Worked ! Thanks for the show. Wish you were around when i was a kid. For some reason i am still alive. Jack Hreha

About 30 years ago we were cleaning out my Grandma's house and I found one of these left behind in my uncle's old bedroom he'd used when he was a kid. I guess I was about 13 at the time and it sparked my interest and I eventually got my ham license. Unfortunately when I went to college, I left all my electronics gear at home with my parents. When I got back several years later, this was one of the pieces missing, along with a lot of other gems my mom probably thought was junk filling up my ham shack in the laundry room! Too bad I sure wish I still had it around! It's probably in a landfill somewhere. Thanks for the video. It was really a treat to see this come up in my feed.

A tip that I'd like to convey is all the glass tubes have their tube number printed on the side. So if you choose to clean the chassis and dusty tubes it is easy to wipe the tube type off with even a gentle cleaner and a rag. End result a mystery tube. Thank you for making this video and give this old kit some fresh air.

@FrodoOne1

2 жыл бұрын

I am old enough to remember that some of the early 7-pin and 9-pin "Noval" based vacuum types had silver plated pins, which was thought to be a good idea, at the time. However, it was found that the silver "migrated" across the glass base of the tube, causing "interesting" leakage problems between pins. The result of that was, when confronted with a "problem" with such eastly tubes, the first thing that a "Service Person" would do was to clean the glass surface between the pins, by rubbing with a cotton cord, or similar. When this problem was discovered, silver plating of the pins was discontinued.

Mr Carlson is well versed in all aspects of electronics including vacuum tube and solid state. He seems to have that natural ability to troubleshoot with both logic and gut feelings. He's probably one of the best electronic troubleshooters that I have ever seen. Bravo Mr Carlson..I love your videos!

That is the coolest Vacuum relay I have ever seen.

That device you were holding is a vacuum switch or relay. It is perfect for antenna switching, high voltage switching, or isolating because it has very low capacitive coupling.

My brother and I had this unit for our radio stations when we were kids (1965-1972). We hooked up the antenna output to a 20 foot piece of 12 gauge wire and went off to see how far it transmitted. We walked about a mile or two; the signal had drifted over onto a major station so we high-tailed it back and turned it off! Great device and great show today!!

@kennethdegruchy5503

Жыл бұрын

Wow, you guys did just what I did and I think it was the very same year of 1965 when I had my own radio station each afternoon after school. the call letters were WNUT. It was lots of fun getting my classmates to try and tune in.

As a kid I built one of these too. Had a lot of fun with it which lead to a career in radio-TV broadcasting where I got to play with the big stuff. ;-)

When I was a kid, I connected one lead from my phonograph to the metal cap on the top of a tube of an old radio. I first removed the radio wire that normally was connected to the tube and connected the other lead from my phono. This made my old radio into a transmitter. I could then play my phono and pick up the signal on nearby radios. This was a hit or miss transmitter, I didn’t know really what I was creating. I fell in love with radio at an early age thanks to an uncle who also liked radio.

I am loving this. My first kit. At age 10, I used this kit and was an imaginary DJ to my brother and two sisters. This was followed by a Knight Kit 101 experiments kit, Heathkit IM-13, helping my dad build a Heathkit Shawnee Six, trouble shooting a Collins R-388, then majoring in electrical engineering at Texas A&M. Followed by a career in media production and now as I near retirement I do high res audio engineering tracking, mixing and mastering of pipe organ and jazz performances. All starting with that cute little Knight Kit Broadcaster. 😀

@MrCarlsonsLab

5 жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing your story Gordon!

@practicalmedicine4359

3 жыл бұрын

Appointment today?

I still have my Knightkit Broadcaster. I built it around 1961. Three of us in our neighborhood used them to "ham" with. I also used it for a guitar amplifier. And I subsequently got my Ham license....56 years now.

@hank1519

5 жыл бұрын

Are you operating these days? I have a tech license, but am crrently taking a break.

We had a Knight kit radio broadcaster amplifier when we were little kids. My Dad ordered it from Allied Radio Corporation in August 1962 when the amplifier in his record player broke down, so he ordered this unit and he and I both built it together. He then plugged his record player in this radio broadcaster and he'd listen to his phonograph records through an AM radio. It was fun!

Zback in the 50s we were told to keep your left hand in your back pocket. While working on these. Ac dc radios.

Great! I built the Graymark broadcaster kit in High School electrical shop in the early 70's. It used a pair of 50C5s and a 12AV6 if I remember.

My dad bought me this very Knight Kit when I was about 12 years old. I put it together, and we broadcast to the neighbors radio and my dad told stories to the 7 year old neighbor boy. What fun it was. You brought back a lot of memories. Thank you. I enjoy your explanations; even if most of it is over my head.

@fjs1111

Жыл бұрын

Jim, that's awesome. I loved opening electronic kits when i was that age, but something about radio and being on air yourself was really cool

@fjs1111

Жыл бұрын

This kit could probably transmit about about 1/4-1/2 mile LOS? not bad at all

My brother and I had something very similar to this back in the 70's. It was a 7 or 9watt AM broadcast amp. We would broadcast our radio station WAMAMFM through out our neighborhood. I'll never forget the fun we had. Sometimes my brother would walk up to Mr. Doughnuts at the end of our street to buy cigarettes from the vending machine there for 45¢ and he'd have his transistor radio with him to check our signal strength while I would broadcast. I'd broadcast what kind of doughnut I'd want him to bring home and would have to promise over the air to pay him back. It was sooo cool when he brought home the right flavor doughnut.

@gywilmsen2409

3 жыл бұрын

I never knew there were that many young guys like me that loved to “experiment” making our own broadcast stations. Later on I bought an FM kit and supposedly it had a limited range. I was able to pump out a signal for about a half mile or so. Didn’t have a PLL so the signal would drift. But it was fun.

Back in the day, Stancor and Triad were the big dogs on the street for transformers and could easily run up to 1/2 the cost of the kits or more, so line voltage design, while "tasty", allowed a fairly affordable build for the hobbyist kid- like I was. My best friend and I would head to the dump about once a month and harvest components from old t.v.'s and radios we dug up for our reuse. Once we took a bucket of tubes to the local supermarket that had one of those courtesy tube testers there, but we were thrown out after about a half- hour of using their electricity and not buying any of their tubes. ☺ Damn, those were fun times for a coupla entrepreneurs!

Enjoy your videos , I am a Ham and have always loved old radios. Until you hear a tube type radio you don’t know what you are missing I grew up with them such a great sound .

Wow! i actuall built this kit, made a console, added two turntables, a tape recorder and a Lafayette Radio mic. It actually worked. Amazing coverage when I “accidentally” hooked it up to my dad’s ham 20meter beam!

When i was 10 years old i built the first piece of electronic gear in my life which was a pair of Knight Kit 3 transistor walkie talkies. I built them with an old Weller soldering gun. They were rated at 100 milliwatts but i doubt they actually made more than 50. Amazingly i learned quite a bit of electronic theory from those kits. They were my introduction to electronics way back in 1961 and sparked my interest in radio. Today i hold an Extra class FCC license and Ive never lost interest in electronics. Thanks for the memory, Paul I look forward to the next excellent video.

Ah, the good old days when Electronic Catalogs came in the mail. Lafayette Radio Electronics, Allied Radio, Radio Shack, Heathkit ! I ordered and built the Lafayette AM Xmtr, back in the day. 73

I took my 1961 Knight Kit Broadcaster mobile one time. Using one of my friend's dad's shaver inverter, plugged into the cigarette lighter of the ole 1949 Chevy, and the car radio antenna disconnected and hooked to the Broadcaster. My friend could hear me about a mile away, as I remember (a relatively open area). Bet that little inverter was huffing and puffing and I can't remember if it survived the test.

@MrCarlsonsLab

5 жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing your story John, there sure have been some interesting entries here.

Thanks I wish you were around 57 years ago when I built this unit! My first kit I was 13 yrs old. I would broadcast local bands from my parents garage! This unit had a s surprisingly great ac carrier signal that would travel down a highway some two miles. Thanks for the great video , it’s a wonder I’m still alive at 70 years old now! I didn’t realize that there was a potential of ac on the chassis. Thank you thank you that’s my baby! I went on to be a commercial dj, then onto radio station general manager

Paul, I've watched this video a couple times now and this time the came to me, " Why doesn't Mr. Carlson build a AM broadcaster like this ... only better" and post it to Patreon!

This would be a great little kit for people wanting to get an auxilary source onto a nice old radio that did not have any auxilary input. It could give quite extended life to old radios in the new world. Imagine playing some really nice music through that old radio on the shelf from a modern source with this little thing hiding in the back room somewhere.

My very first electronic kit when I was a kid in the 60's! Thank you so much for that nostalgic trip! Brings back a lot of memories!

@MrCarlsonsLab

Жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it Ken!

I had 2 of these when I was a a kid in the mid 60's. Drift was a major drift problem. I used the speaker transformer as input and plate modulation.

I built a KnightKit Phono Oscillator in 1964 and actually Increased Output and made it Crystal Controlled, 1600 KC. I lived in Benton, AR. on a Large Lot, on River Street, and never got a complaint. It was a simple kit with excellent Schemetic and Pictoral Diagram. I was 14 Years old.

Great video. As a kid I built a Radio Shack low power AM transmitter and adjusted the tuning up to the TV channels so I could jam the video of our own TV. We had only one TV and if I jammed the channel my sisters wanted then I would get to watch something better on another channel ! Worked great but eventually I got caught. I guess it became obvious finally as after an argument over what channel was going to be watched I would run upstairs and tune the transmitter until I heard screams of displeasure downstairs 😂.

I was surprised to see your scope showing the demodulated signal and not the RF envelope. Old AM guy here. I'm used to watching envelopes. BTW, I'm so old that whenever I see an N-channel FET I imagine it as a triode. 😊 Another well done, informative video. Thanks and 73!

@psionl0

5 жыл бұрын

I tend to think of it more as a pentode (without the screen grid) because of the high drain resistance.

@ralfbaechle

5 жыл бұрын

Can't blame you for that. From a teaching / understanding electronics perspective the inner workings of tubes are easier to understand than unipolar or bipolar transistors and for some applications tubes are having near-perfect properties, all good for getting started. What I don't like about tubes, in particular power tubes are the voltages in the kilovolt range near the knuckles while doing adjustments or heat that puts a sauna to the shame ...

@johnopalko5223

5 жыл бұрын

@@ralfbaechle Working around tubes does teach you to be careful. And to keep one hand in your pocket.

@psionl0

5 жыл бұрын

@@ralfbaechle Yes, semiconductors take some teaching. But once you understand the theory about how a semiconductor works, it is no more difficult to learn about transistors than it is to learn about valves.

the Knight kit AM radio I built in 1963 for a project in electronics shop still works fine. there are few good AM stations anymore and the amount of QRM nowadays is insane compared to the good ole days. I also made a radio by drawing the wire on paper with a soft graphite pencil and clipping the leads for the other components such as I could. mixed results but it did work for proof of concept. there were very few printed circuits as they were too difficult to make then esp. for a school shop. my favorite class. I like you video offering and found it very nostalgic. makes me want to pick up the ole butter knight and blow torch and soldier something up. (the soldering irons we were provided were the large plug in type better suited now for soldering up in sheet metal shop. lol so the butter knife analogy is really accurate. Nail and blowtorch was common. keep this stuff up I love it.

I wonder how many youths used those little home weather stations in combination with these Knight Kits to provide accurate extremely local current weather conditions.

When my uncle was still around, we made a small Radio receiver and transmitter. Those were the days, this one brought back memories, which is nice. :) I should get it out of storage, clean it up and see if it still works.

Mr. Carlson, Dating myself here but, When I was a kid back i'm guessing in the mid 50's or so. Myself and a couple friends used to order stuff from Allied radio all the time. Transistors were I believe about .99 cents each, We built transistor radios with 2 or 3 transistors in them (that was fancy stuff at the time) Anyway one of us bought and built that kit, I believe they called it a wireless oscillator at the time. I lived about 1 mile away from Paul (he's the one that had it). When I left Paul's house I could hear him till I got almost all the way home.

Excellent video as usual! And of course EXCELLENT CHANNEL! One of my FAVORITES! This video, and so many others like it are great, but they always assume a fair amount of knowledge and experience from the start. That’s fine and dandy, BUT, let’s face it: WE WERE ALL BEGINNERS AT ONE TIME. I still have a TON to learn myself. That said, SO MANY videos and KZreadrs like this TALK about safety, but never actually SHOW the safety procedures. Yeah, yeah, I know: If you don’t have experience working with this stuff, you shouldn’t be doing it. But let’s face it: Nine out of ten REALLY GOOD technicians on KZread, AND IN THE REAL WORLD, are SELF TAUGHT. I took correspondence courses from the Cleveland Institute of Electronics 30 years ago, but it was all theory, almost no hands on, and we all know that the learning doesn’t RRREALLY start until we roll up our sleeves and STICK OUR HANDS INSIDE. These self-taught, now-EXPERTS, are people that INDEED stuck their hands in places and at times they shouldn’t have. How about making some videos, or just appending an extra five minutes to future videos ACTUALLY SHOWING THE DISCHARGING PROCESS; actually SHOWING the do’s and don’ts of SAFETY. MOST KZread channels like this show scene cuts AFTER something has ALREADY been done (this channel included): New scene: “Ok, now you can see that I have replaced all the caps.”.... NNNNO!!! SHOW yourself replacing the caps! SHOW yourself discharging the unit before sticking your hands in there. SHOW yourself taking measurements, and SHOW beginners that lethal voltages REALLY ARE present BEFORE any discharging takes place. If you do this, you will foster a LOT more education, and especially, A LOT MORE SAFETY. In short, show, SHOW, SSSHHHOOOWWW! ... Or just like the song by Canadian band, Rush, says, “SHOW ME, DON’T TELL ME!”... Great video, great channel, and I am a faithful viewer, follower, and fan, but SHOW rather than just tell! Thanks!

Remember, all real radios glow in the dark.

@scottwillow332

4 жыл бұрын

And so do the people who still use them

@Nexalian_Gamer

3 жыл бұрын

Well I just used a radioactive dildo and now my ass is glowing.I guess radioactive stuff makes us glow once we use it.

@gameyord7182

2 жыл бұрын

Yessir

@SpookySpencerFinnLoki

2 жыл бұрын

Go Radium!

Lafayette Radio made these AM broadcasters also--and in fully built form. They continuously but slowly would drift off frequency--even after being on for 5 or 6 hours--requiring listeners to retune every 15 minutes or so. But for $5, the broadcasters still were a good deal and lots of fun.

Especially true with antiques: If it's not broken, don't fix it.

I built one of these about 1965 and have a lot of good memories. I think the cost was about $10.

These were the kind of nerd toys I gravitated towards when I was a kid. Great walk down memory lane.

We have cut the cable cord many years ago. These days I spend my tv time watching KZread videos. This is one subscription I look forward to new videos. Not an electronic guy at all I just enjoy his projects. I will leave watching Grays Anatomy and or any other net work gibberish to others to watch. I will pop my popcorn and watch Mr. Carlson’s Lab.

@robertcalkjr.8325

5 жыл бұрын

There are other stuff on cable, you know. I am multitasking and watching the Science channel right now about supernovas and other good stuff!

@alakani

5 жыл бұрын

@@robertcalkjr.8325 Every episode of How the Universe Works and A Spacetime Odyssey is available for free without ads on ihavenotv.com along with 400 other full length astronomy documentaries, including from the Science channel and a lot of other channels, plus 2500 more on all kinds of other subjects. Did you know there was a research study which showed that children who were shown just two TV ads - and were then asked to choose between spending time with either a mean bully with the toy from the ads, or a nice friendly kid without the toy - invariably chose the bully with the toy?

@robertcalkjr.8325

5 жыл бұрын

Alden Zenko No, but I don't believe every "study" that I hear about. I don't want to wear my computer out on TV shows. Also, most of the time I DVR shows and skip past commercials or just mute them if I am watching live. I love remote controls!

We had a couple of these back in the mid-60s; in fact, I wired one myself. We were required to use an antenna of 10 feet or less. We didn't have any fancy modulation analyzer as shown in this video. Sure wish I did, though! Anyway, we fed our audio not to the XTAL or MAG ports, but from another 8-ohm audio amp which we connected via zip cord to the Knight-Kit's audio transformer terminals. I didn't discover this myself, another genius of a hobbyist put me on to it. It worked great for our neighborhood radio station, for which we had a home-brew console, a couple of turntables, a mike and a reel-to-reel recorder. The Knight-Kit was on the second floor of my friend's house, and the vertically-polarized, fully-extended telescoping auto radio antenna was mounted outside the house. The studio was in the basement of the house, which we were able to do because we ran zip cord from our audio amp to the Knight-Kit's xfmr terminals. "Those were the days, my friend...."

A Lafayette LA-23, of the same vintage, gave me hours of fun which culminated into a 60 year career in radio broadcasting.

Omg, I built one of these when I was 12. 1958? How cool to see it again. I used it to re-transmit my favorite FM jazz station (KRHM) so I could listen to Miles Davis out in the backyard. Man was I a hepcat kid or what? 😂. Thanks so much Mr. Carlson!

OMG I had this exact transmitter when i was a kid! We got it at a garage sale. I remember the seller saying "oh , oh thats trouble" picking on me for wanting it at 10 years old

@ricande

5 жыл бұрын

WELL??? What happened? You got in to trouble, didn't you? :)

@researchandbuild1751

5 жыл бұрын

@@ricande nope lol we lived 40 acres in the middle of nowhere. But that transmitter worked great. Dont remember what ended up happening to it. Maybe still at my parents house

@josephpadula2283

2 жыл бұрын

Believe me your mother threw that “junk” away when you were away in the ( fill in the blank). Military College First out of town job Your own entry here…

@kendoty2463

Жыл бұрын

@@josephpadula2283 My Mom would neatly line up shiny solder balls but stuff nasty ol' green circuit boards in the trash . . .

I can remember one Christmas about 1950 when my older brothers had this device. They imitated the "HADACOL" adverstisment. The All american 5 were also called an AC/DC radios. People in the rural area with no ac could but batteries to add up to 120 Volts and have a radio.

Years ago, I built a Ramsey FM stereo radio transmitter. I didn't know what to expect but the Ramsey transmitter can transmit a high fidelity stereo signal about a half mile with the small antenna that comes with the kit. You could probably transmit a better signal with a better external antenna but I have never tried it.

I remember the Knight-Kits (including a very low -power broadcast band radio transmitter) that one could build electronic devices of many kinds...so way back in the nineteen fifties, being in a 44 week Navy service school, I built a 5" "scope", a multimeter, a sig gen...and used them for a while...satisfactory: but then, having worked with "pro" test equipment as a tech, much preferred Tektronix scopes, pro multimeters and such...so sold those kits later when I managed to buy better gear...which stimulated the beginning of a long working career, later got a degree from the University...used it with the DoD...retired right after Y2K...gotta say I enjoy your various Lab Vids...

Excellent modulation for such a small device.

MY MOM MAY HAVE MADE THAT 50C5. There was a factory in Norwood Ohio a few miles from here. She LOVED working with those little parts. I recall her telling me as a child and we actually spoke of it a few years ago. She died in April 2017 I have a few little ones around here somewhere. I built my own aprox 300W AM transmitter from parts of schematics from an ARRL handbook in the local library. I used a special order crystal in an army surplus oven, cut for 1610 AM from Jans Crystals, Crystal springs FL. I'm thinking I paid about $10 for that. The rest including Color TV horiz output tubes for the transmitter, x 4 Those were the days, I had a Heath Kit scope to watch the modulation. I was VERY popular around my neighborhood. for about 14 months... I was a bad boy.

@jeromewysocki8809

5 жыл бұрын

m AUSTIN , hope you didn't get in trouble. 😀 Back in the 1960s, a friend of mine did that for about a month. He got a visit from two gentlemen from the FCC, who showed him the "error of his ways." 😀😀😀 Fortunately, he got off only with a warning.

@MikeAustin2012

5 жыл бұрын

@@jeromewysocki8809 Thank you sir. No I didn't get into trouble. I was about 13 when I started. Ran for 14 months. It was known that they didn't prosecute kids for this. I got a stern speech, made to dissemble the transmitter and they took my crystal. I had a spare but never went on again. That WOULD land you in prison. Not sure how much power. I had 4 x I think 6LQ6 big tube for horiz output with a cap on top for the plate voltage. I only ran about 40% modulation because my audio amp was only about 100w. That was 50 something years ago. The FCC guy was nice. He said they had me on a tracking station near Akron, OH. Had I paid attention in school, I'd have known that Akron is not near Dayton, about 50 miles but near Lake Erie south of Cleveland. My head would have been even bigger. Thanks, the good old days.

I'm going to be building a little transmitter with a 1Zh37b rod pentode once I get all of the parts ready. These unique Soviet subminiature tubes use closely spaced rods rather than grids and have unusually good low-voltage performance.

By the way, I believe every video you publish on youtube, Just like you, I am a serviceman technician here in our locality, I restore, repair, and even install electronic equipment as what my clients wants me to do.

Wow - I went back to my own little example. Replaced C-7, the 470pf - I had no suitable mono caps, so I used a 470pf silver-mica. It's as stable as the transistor radio I'm using to 'preview' it. It used to drift for about 20 minutes before it warmed up. Thanks!

I made an AM transmitter for my grade 8 science project, the design was from Howard Sam's "Having fun with Transistors". It used 2 2n107 germanium transistors and I had to wind my own antenna coil. It had a range of 6 feet and appeared on 7 different points on the tuner dial.

@ohger1

2 жыл бұрын

7 points simultaneously? Lots of harmonics..

This was one of my first electronic projects at age 12. I read about the 12 inch antenna restriction, but it worked so much better attached to the families' steam heating system. We broadcast about 2 miles. Had so much fun. I never figured out why that even worked, because the steam pipes went into the cellar, and hooked to the boiler which had grounded water pipes. Andy

What a gem this video is for a person like me who grew up admiring these kits and building a few with my dad. I've loved wires and circuits ever since.

I wouldn't know a flux cap if it hit me over the head but I do enjoy this stuff.your a wealth of knowledge.

Excellent! Feels like I'm watching lost episodes of The Outer Limits circa 1963

Very clean. You could probably send CW a mile or two.

I love watching Ron the glasslinger flash his getter!

I built one in my youth (early 1960's) and used it to jam the local radio frequency of my sister's favorite radio station. What a blast.

@practicalmedicine4359

3 жыл бұрын

April 28 Just

Dude, you're the living ARRL handbook! Great video and fun teardown!

@goodnightmr5892

5 жыл бұрын

Lance Emil MY GOD YOU’RE RIGHT! He’s 🖖!

@auspicioustoot

5 жыл бұрын

What’s that?

@notsofunnynowisit

5 жыл бұрын

@@auspicioustoot The American Radio Relay League is the formal organization and outreach program for Amateur Radio operators (Ham Radio) and electronics enthusiasts in general. The ARRL handbook is an indispensable guide to learn all about amateur radio and electronics. You can find out more at www.arrl.org/

Wow did that bring back memories. That was the first transmitter I ever had. I put it in a wooden box and modified it to also be an intercom. I somehow lost the unit over the years but it was the beginnings of my lifelong carrier in TV, Radio and Microwave broadcast RF engineering. Thank you Knight Kit and Mr., C

I once made something like this, and it actually worked, but was only able to transmit AM stations, and had to be very close to the radio to work. I then decided to connect a big antenna to it, which got it working up to a few feet away. Also, you look like your in a space station🚀

Oh did this bring back memories. I built one of these back around 56 or 57. Didn't work that great but it was a lot of fun...

Nice review of this transmitter. I saved one of these from the trash. It is the earliest model of Knight kit broadcaster that did not have a bottom cover. They must have felt that who ever built it would keep their fingers out of it. After a few years they did come out with the model you have.

@kendoty2463

Жыл бұрын

Plenty of good ZAPs off top of chassis; twitches when touching parts underneath could damage set ! ! ! 😂

@ka9szx

Жыл бұрын

@@kendoty2463 More likely it teaches a healthy respect of AC. Try flipping the plug to reduce the tingle on the chassis.

I've got some old Allied Electronics catalogs from the late 50s and early 60s I found in my cousins basement. Great stuff to look at and reminisce. My dad had a knight reel to reel tape recorder when he was a teen.

I understood non of this but I could not stop watching...

My comments to show support for your Videos are as follows. *Big Thumbs Up*

I had a similar "home radio station" in the early '60s (though not built from a kit). It was called the Caravelle, made by Remco. The plastic case of the unit was mostly empty. The microphone, you could only talk into it while holding down the button on the back of it. I gave my station the unofficial call letters WDSC and would play records through it as a DJ.

Items such as what you presented here, can be found at Ham radios swap meets. I like to pick up such items as they probably do not work, and see if I can make them work. Some of my favorites are Heathkits of all kind, as these items where all built by someone, and the manuals for them can usually be found on the Internet. I like the simple kits, as they are fun and easy for me to trouble shoot and they maybe useful in my Ham radio. Thanks again for a great job of explaining how all of this "old stuff" works!

Knight kit had some pretty cool products. When I was 5 years old my father built a C 27. It was a unique two channel CB. It had a VFO so you could listen to all the channels you didn't have. His callsign began with the number 5. The ITU put the kibosh on that so the FCC switch to the letter K as a prefix.

Ha Ha, I recognized that photo tube right away, I have a 922 siting on my bench. awesome videos, thanks.

I built one of those as my first kit. I used it as an audio amp with a turntable and speaker . It played my mono Beach Boy albums an an acceptable level and sounded good. I replaced it with a Heathkit stereo vacuum tube amp which served me well. Of course I had no idea it was so dangerous, but everything probably was back then. I still have the albums.

One time I soldered a kit with SMD components using a sharpened earthing conductor and a blowtorch, fun times

Ah, this brings back memories of when I fired up my own AM broadcast station as a teen long ago. Via surplus and for about $5, I'd gotten the LF oscillator accessory that was installed in some WWII ART-13s. It was intended to let that Collins-made HF aircraft transmitter tune down the ship frequencies below the AM broadcast band. Since it tuned into the low end of the broadcast band, that gave me an idea. For modulation, I took an audio output transformer that converted from a high impedance (tube) to a speaker (low). I reversed it, feeding the low impedance speaker output of my SW radio into it and feeding the power for the oscillator through the high impedance winding. For an antenna, I hooked up both sides of the coax feeding my 10-meter beam, so that meant about a 20-foot high vertical. Oh, and I hooked a high-voltage capacitor from a TV between the plate of that oscillator and the antenna, so the antenna wouldn't be hot with about 250 volts. Since this wasn't exactly to FCC regulations, I took two precautions. First, I put it on the air on Christmas Day. Surely, I told myself, they won't be working today. And second, for audio I supplied it with what a local AM station was broadcasting. If anyone tuned it in, they'd wonder why that station was on a different frequency. Then I took off in the family car to see how far I was getting. On one direction, a dry, sandy hill top, it petered out after about five blocks. In the other, with damp soil, it was still strong when I got to a wood almost a mile away. That way, it was probably getting about two miles. Here's what I was using: ----- Low Frequency Coverage and More Accessories - The standard ART-13 transmitter frequency range is from 2.0mc to 18.0mc, however many Navy ATC and T-47/ART-13 transmitters and later USAAF T-47A/ART-13A transmitters were equipped with a plug-in Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO) module that allowed the transmitter to operate from 200kc to 600kc or 200kc to 1500kc (at somewhat reduced power, CW only for electrically short antennae.) Early LFOs had a frequency range of 200kc to 1500kc in six ranges designated as O-16/ART-13, while the later LFOs cover 200kc to 600kc in three ranges and is designated as O-17/ART-13A. The LFO modules used a single 1625 tube. When the LFO is in operation the ART-13 Multiplier section is bypassed and the LFO output directly drives the PA. --- The ART-13 was probably the most beautifully made of the WWII transmitters, as you can see from the interior photos here. www.radioblvd.com/art13.htm

WOW...that takes me back. I built this kit many, many years ago. It's presently hiding in my attic. As far as the trivia item, that's from the movie Men in Black 2.....The machine gun. ..no ?

Wow - I remember every detail from age 9 when it was a brand new kit; I wish I had kept it. ( I built TWO of them! Worked, but I never could get the range to go beyond a few houses. RF was a complete mystery to me as I experimented with various antenna "wires" and overworked that slot on the tuning capacitor. Unsupervised 110 VAC construction by a kid... good old days! lol)

@kenseastrand7428

5 жыл бұрын

I have not built a tube type, but I did build a Crystal receiver with the old bare crystal and cat whisker and about 150 feet of antennae with my dad when I was about 9 and it worked! but I think we were smarter back then, kids now days they would have the "stick the wire in your butt and plug it in challenge" HAHAHA

@FindLiberty

5 жыл бұрын

@@kenseastrand7428 YES! I'm happy to hear that (back then) you found the exact sweet spot in that bare crystal. A "modern" germanium glass diode did not produce the same thrill for the next generation... And today, it's got a touch screen.