Stanley Johnson, W9LBV, of Grand Island, Nebraska, is shown here in the December 1935 issue of Popular Science operating his $3 five meter transceiver. The set contains a single tube, a type 76 triode. He reports that “probably the first radio distress call ever sent from a moving bicyle was transmitted with this compact set. During tests, the author, operating the transceiver as he pedaled along a country road, noticed that the front tire on his bicycle had developed a leak. A hurried call on the radiotelephone to a brother experimenter back in town brought the necessary repair materials long before the tire was entirely flat.”

He reports that when used mobile with 135 volts of batteries, the rig had a range of a couple of miles. The range was limited primarily by the voltage of the B battery. When used at a fixed location with higher plate voltage and a better antenna, the range was considerably greater.

The circuit is simplicity itself, as revealed by the schematic. The tube served as a Hartley oscillator which was used as a superregenerative receiver. Flipping the switch to transmit shorted out the headphones, removed the grid leak resistor from the circuit, and hooked up an absorption modulation circuit.

Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon