Little Molly was obsessed with radios. (Adult Molly is also obsessed with radios.)
Thing is, Little Molly didn't get to do much with radios except have one in her bedroom as an alarm clock. Little Molly's parents didn't think twice about radios. And even though Little Molly asked for a crystal radio kit for every birthday and Christmas for ten years straight, nobody ever bought her one.
There were a lot of reasons for this, including but not limited to "but your talents are in writing, not electronics" (true but irrelevant) and "that's not appropriate for girls" (false and stupid). Anyway, it resulted in Little Molly growing up into Young Adult Molly, who went to college and got degrees in reading/writing/arguing/organizing the world's information, and sort of forgot about the whole radio thing. Until recently.
I bought a 1988 Radio Shack radio at a thrift shop a few weeks ago for $5. It has shortwave capabilities. I, not content with merely flipping a switch labeled "SW," of course wanted to know what the hell shortwave is all about. So I looked it up. (I'm not a librarian for nothing.) This led me to do way too much reading about amateur radio, because there really aren't resources about shortwave out there anymore that *don't* overlap with amateur radio.
And THAT's a whole nother rabbit hole I will DEFINITELY ramble about at some point, but right now, let's talk about crystal radios. Because I also remembered how badly I wanted to build one as a kid.
Kits are hard to come by these days, but there are instructions online for making a crystal radio from mere parts. I used this one:
https://steampunk.wonderhowto.com/how-to/complete-guide-build-crystal-radioplus-they-work-0141117/
My first attempt skipped the antenna. There's only one AM station in town, but they're not too far from my house, and my powered units always pick them up with better clarity than most "local" FM stations (which actually come from fifty miles away, with one exception). So I figured even if the signal was faint, I'd still be able to pick it up. I could not.
I sat there, scowling at the wire wrapped around a plastic peanut butter jar, and had the following train of thought:
"I need an antenna."
"Yeah, but if I add an antenna I'm going to need a ground."
"Water pipes are a good ground."
"Okay, but the water pipes are in the basement, so I'm going to need a BIG antenna. Just a big old bag of conductive slop."
"....I know what is a big old bag of conductive slop."
This is how I ended up standing in my kitchen holding a wire-wrapped peanut butter jar taped to a faucet.
Yes. I used my body as the antenna. AND IT WORKED. I laughed for a minute straight. Sometimes the dumbest things just WORK and it is so DUMB and I LOVE IT.
And then I emailed my local ham radio club to ask about their license class. Nobody can tell Little Molly NOT to mess around with radios now.
(Before anyone asks: no, I would not have tried this if the radio had any kind of power source. I was only willing to attempt it BECAUSE crystal radios aren't powered. I'm so leery of power sources that I was the only kid in high school physics class who refused to lick the nine volt battery. "The tingle on your tongue tells you it's working!" thanks but we'll use YOUR tongue for that, bro.)
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