9:30 or so right now. And the smell of pancakes dominates the nostrils in my small little apartment. In a place the size of mine, it doesn’t take long for the scent to filter to every corner of every room. The washed out sound of an AM radio, with the occasional pop of static. But oh how much better it would sound on my Admiral radio. He he.
If course it’s only Tuesday. It’s hardly possible that they could have shipped the thing yesterday, and it travel from North Carolina all the way to Kansas in one day. But even though I haven’t even seen the radio with my own eyes yet. I’ve already learned quite a bit.
For instance. I figured out how traffic light sensors work. I always thought that when your car drove over the sensor, it sensed that pressure on the road and sent a signal to the box on the light. Entirely not so.
If you were to take a coil of wire, and wrap it around any metal that can be magnitized (like iron for instance), you can hook up a battery and you can store energy in that coil of wire in the form of a magnetic field. The more energy you “pump” into the coil, the stronger the magnet you make. It’s called an inductor.
Well, you can see a big oblong marking on the road at an intersection, right? Well this is actually a big coil of wire that is planted in the street, which is hooked to a powersource at the light. This coil of wire doesn’t store much energy on it’s own, since there’s no metal core. But when your car pulls over that coil, your car is the core, and suddenly a greater amount of energy is able to be pumped into the coils of wire beneath you and is stored as a magnetic field. The box on the stop light senses this power change, and then knows your car is there waiting for the light to change!
Pretty cool stuff, no? The way a radio reciever works it makes use of the same kind of inductor, but along with what is called a capacitor, which stores energy, but only in a different way. It’s a bit more complicated, but really interesting. So even if I don’t get the radio, I guess I can’t write it off as a complete loss.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
The basic theory of any receiver is the same, as well as the basic theory of any transceiver or transmitter. I deal with them, their theory, and their repair in my job, but heck, you almost make receivers sound interesting….good work.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
He he. I might be enlisting your knowledge then if I come up against something I can’t tackle.
You have been warned. 😉
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
you know i think ill stick to computers this whole radio thing is quite interesting i cant wait to hear or read more on your progress…. maybe we can take a step forward and mod the radio to stream over the internet =P …im just kidding ….although that would be kinda kewl although way to much work into getting it done ….
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Well, it’d be a bit tricky with this radio since it’s only an AM reciever. But if I had an AM/FM, then I’d just have to rig up a headphone jack. Which is the only thing that keeps me from streaming the station anyway, I don’t have a radio with a headphone jack that isn’t battery operated. If I get that, or an FM tuner card in my PC, I’ll start streaming KJCK for all select few to hear.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
id opt for the fm tuner card because if im going to be on the radio id like to hear it =)–>