Dear Santa...

I was just wondering the other day, when someone was going put SDR in a stand alone scanner.
 
I remember building one from a kit and later from scratch using a toilet paper core for the coil windings.

Dang harshness, you one-upped me. I never built a crystal radio out of a toilet paper core. :( I did, however, build one from a kit. ;)
 
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Built one of those "foxhole radios" from a '60's Popular Mechanics way back when. Used a razor blade and pencil lead instead of a germanium diode. Never worked for me though, hi hi.
 
I can still remember as a kid building a crystal radio from a Radio Shack kit and used an alligator clip to connect to the metal part of our rotary phone finger stop, i think it was for power or was that the antenna? wow, that sure dug up an old memory!
 
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Used a razor blade and pencil lead instead of a germanium diode.
Back in my mom's day, they used galena diodes. Half the fun was finding the spots on the crystal that acted as a diode.

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I made 4 or 5 as an early teen. The crystals were readily available from Olsen Electronics. No power needed, unless you wanted a speaker.
But then I got my HAM license at 13, and had no time for 'fake' radios.
 
I had an aunt who claimed in the old days she could "hear" a radio station coming out of one of her teeth. Hmmmm.......
Back in the day, the material that dental fillings were made from wasn't all that far from germanium or galena. There's still the issue of how you listen to it. The signal would need to be strong enough not to need a tuner or antenna.
 
Is that a police scanner?

I didn’t think Uniden was still around. I had one of their police scanners and CB radios as a kid.
 
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