I had no battery powered radios to get me through the over 24 hours of power outtage I sat through. My only solution: A crystal radio I was able to assemble in my basement (okay, technically diode based). I was able to get in CFRB NewsTalk 1010, a Toronto based station, completely clearly. I didn’t have any of those special low-impedance headphones, but a transducer from a telephone headset worked perfectly.
I never would’ve thought I genuinely have a need for a crystal radio in this day and age!
My girlfriend was saying we ought to get a Grundig hand-cranked short-wave radio for emergencies back before the blackout and I’m afraid I giggled at her extensively. Now she is able to say “I told you so, NOW can we get the radio?”
Umm, yeah, this thread has MPSIMS written all over it.
How about a charcoal-powered thermocouple radio. Then you can also cook all the warm meat in your dead fridge.
Did you use just a diode? Or did you make a coil and tuning capacitor? Crystal radio trivia: the resonator is not just a filter which eliminates unwanted stations. It also causes radio waves of a particular frequency to bend towards the antenna, so the antenna actually intercepts more energy than it otherwise would. (With Yagi television antennas the extra elements do something similar, but with a crystal radio, the tuner makes the antenna act as it’s own “director” element.)
Stick a diode and headphones on an antenna and ground, and you hear almost nothing. If the tuner was just a filter, wouldn’t you hear all possible stations? It doesn’t work that way. But add a tuner and you can make a single station very loud. Adding an LC circuit increases the “effective aperature” of short antennas.