solarbird | i really am sorry guys

This week is just not working out for a DIY post. Instead of tossing out a sloppy, short post about digital audio workstations, I’m going to punt it back for a week in order to do it right. We’ll talk about digital audio workstation software next Wednesday, when I’ll hopefully be back on schedule.

But if you’re really jonsing for something fun to build, below is a great video series on building a really attractive crystal radio. It’s AM only, of course, as they all are, but there’s no power required and you really are building your own equipment from the ground up. You’re even building your own variable capacitor, the prettiest one I’ve seen in a crystal radio build:

It’s broken up into 12 short video chunks for some reason. Part 1 is all background, you can skip that if you want and just start here on Part 2, about two minutes in. But if you start that late you’ll miss them showing off a different classic crystal radio design.

uh… yeah, it’s all in Japanese. Is that a problem? That might be a problem. If it is, here’s a slightly different design that’s entirely in English. It’s not as pretty, but there’s a parts list, and! you still get to build a capacitor! By hand! Which is awesome.

This one’s not as attractive looking as the kit above, though, so maybe you should steal the physical design from the Japanese video. You could totally make the radio below look a lot like the radio above without much or any Japanese; once you know the circuit it’s all pretty simple and just a matter of arrangement, crafting, and specific materials. (Copper vs. aluminium, things like that.)

Anyway, once more, with English:

Have fun!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!