WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios - HomeBrew Forum at eHam.net

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eHam.net Forum : HomeBrew : WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios

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WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios	Reply
by AE6HR on February 1, 2003	Mail this to a friend!
I am the grandson of a WWII Army Aircorps gunner. Because of this, and my father's insane interested in history (it is contagious you know), I have done a lot of reading about the different wars as well as watching those wonderful (??) documentaries on various history channels. Quite often, both my father and I, have heard of POWs making receivers or tranceivers (in rare cases) from things they could scrounge in some of the war prison camps they were in. I have spent some time, so has my father (who isn't a HAM [yet], but once was GROL, back in his college years), trying to find information in books or on the INTERNET about such feats. I would like to find information that gives how some of them accomplished this. I can see them getting their hands on things to be inductors and capacitors, but have had a hard time figuring out crystals (if used), resistors, and other required parts. Does anyone know of such reference material? 73, Trever Adams AE6HR

RE: WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios	Reply
by WA4PTZ on February 2, 2003	Mail this to a friend!
Considering what it took to make a receiver during WWII I'd have to say that a crystal receiver would be the only type that could have been used and it would have been very difficult to find parts to make even that. The arrival of "solid state" changed the entire world and opened the door to many more possibilties. The movies and TV often lose their technical credibility when it comes to communications and even navigation during WWII. As a history buff myself, it is a facinating subject. It seems unbelievable the advances that we made during WWII and since. It might even be proof of a supreme being. 73 and enjoy - Tim

RE: WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios	Reply
by K5CEY on February 3, 2003	Mail this to a friend!
This brings to mind the "Fox Hole Radio" of the WWII era. The detector was a rusty razor blade with a piece of pencil lead resting against it. Resistors can be made by drawing heavy lines on a piece of paper with a lead pencil. In the early days of grid leak and regenerative receivers, it was common practice to draw a line with a pencil on the tube base between the grid and filament pins to form the grid resistor. John k5CEY

RE: WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios	Reply
by WB6BYU on February 3, 2003	Mail this to a friend!
There have been several cases of POW radios described in the RSGB journal RadCom, and reprinted in the Technical Topics Scrapbooks (available from the ARRL). These were generally regenerative receivers (which were quite common in the '30s and before, and gave high gain with a single tube and minimum parts.) From what I can remember, capacitors were made by winding foil gum wrappers with waxed paper, coils were wound on toilet paper tubes with wire salvaged from old motors, etc. Tubes were either smuggled in, or salvaged from accessible equipment. Such equipment is of special interest to Pat Hawker G3VA, who has been writing the Technical Topics column in RadCom for over 45 years. Pat was in Special Communications during WWII, and has described a number of sets used by undercover agents during the war.

RE: WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios	Reply
by AE6HR on February 5, 2003	Mail this to a friend!
Thank you very much to all of you who answered. Some of you did a wonderful job of helping me find information. I am trying to located the appropriate periodicals or books at this moment. Cheers.

RE: WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios	Reply
by K5LXP on February 7, 2003	Mail this to a friend!
A closely related topic is foxhole radios, which GI's built out of whatever was available. A google search on "Foxhole Radio" netted thousands of hits, many of which also mentioned POW radios in the result. Mark K5LXP Albuquerque, NM k5lxp@arrl.net

RE: WWI, WWII and other POW homebrewing radios	Reply
by AB9GR on March 20, 2003	Mail this to a friend!
Check out the following website. Pretty amazing stuff if you ask me. http://www.armyradio.co.uk/Default.htm?http&&&www.armyradio.co.uk/publish/Articles/William_Howard_Japan/Japanese_POW_Radio.htm Walter

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