Category Archives: Scouting

Radio Detector for a Dime

Radio and Boy Scouting share a long history, and in the early days of Scouting, radio played an important role. The October 1914 issue of Boys’ Life magazine shows this detector, guaranteed to bring in stations from 100 to 500 miles away, for only a dime. All that was needed was a telephone receiver and a wire on the roof. Even though this seemingly arcane piece of technology (consisting mostly of a lump of galena) would set the aspiring young wireless enthusiast back only a dime, he would probably find that the more familiar telephone receiver would be harder to come by. But that too was available, for fifty cents. But for sixty cents, the scout would have a radio that would pull in a strong signal.

1914 Kite Parachute

A hundred years ago, the September 1914 issue of Boys’ Life included these plans for constructing a box kite which would release a parachute. After the kite was aloft, a small runner was released and was blown up the string by the wind. When it got to the top, the parachute would release.

A 1950-Era One Tube Radio

Photo, WS1K

Jon, WS1K, sent me these pictures of a very nice find: A regenerative receiver that he found under a dealer’s table at an antique show in Brimfield, MA. He originally thought it was the receiver from the 1950 ARRL handbook, but after finding this site, he realized that it was closer to the Boys’ Life set that I wrote about earlier.

Photo, WS1K.

Pictures of his receiver are shown here. In addition to the receiver, he got the AC power supply to replace the A and B batteries. It also came with a schematic diagram, which is shown here:

From the way this schematic is drawn, it looks like whoever drew it copied it from the actual constructed radio, rather than vice versa. This circuit is very similar to the 1950 Boys’ Life set, but there are a few variations. For example, the component layout is different (it’s basically a mirror image of the BL set). It also has plug-in coils rather than the fixed coil in the BL set. (Jon believes the coils are for the broadcast band and about 5-6 MHz.)

Unlike the Handbook version, this set uses a transformer to couple the two stages, just like the BL version. It does have a few minor differences, however. For example, the BL version uses only two of the terminals on the regeneration control. Jon’s version uses all three. Both circuits have the cathodes of the tube hooked to one filament pin. However, the BL version calls for the connection to be made to pin 8, whereas Jon’s version calls for the connection to be made to pin 7. There’s no electrical difference, but the use of the different pin indicates that the builder probably wasn’t using the BL schematic. Jon’s version also has another variable capacitor, presumably for fine tuning.

As you can see in the schematic, the hand-drawn diagram of Jon’s set is entitled, “Dan Drummond’s Set.” Despite a little bit of sleuthing, neither of us was able to figure out who Dan Drummond was.

1934 Scout’s One Tube Radio

Shown here in the September 1934 issue of Radio News is Scout Robert Crockett of Troop 3 of the BSA Siwanoy Council, Pelham, New York. He is shown operating the receiver that he designed and built, based upon a design in an earlier issue of the magazine. His circuit uses a single type 30 tube and a handful of other components, all of which can be obtained fairly easily today. For ideas on sourcing the components, you can visit my page describing another 1930’s era receiver or my crystal set parts page. Full construction details are included in the 1934 article.

The author of the article was Robert’s “Scout Radio Examiner,” which presumably means Radio Merit Badge Counselor. According to this 1935 newspaper, Robert did go on to complete the Radio Merit Badge. The magazine article concludes by pointing out that as his daily Good Turn, the Scout would be glad to help anyone building the set with their problems, and that such letters can be sent in care of the magazine. The article notes that he had logged over 300 shortwave stations with the set.

According to the National Eagle Scout Association database, Mr. Crockett became an Eagle Scout on February 24, 1937. And according to this newspaper and this one, he was serving in the military in 1943 and 1944. According to his sister’s 1943 obituary, his service was as an Ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

Will U. S. Boy Scouts Be Used As Soldiers? A 1914 View

It’s not infrequent that some misguided person believes that Scouting has some sort of military connection, and that Boy Scouts are being trained to be soldiers. Of course, Boy Scouts are being trained to be soldiers. But they’re also being trained to be engineers or doctors or lawyers.

There are a handful of superficial similarities between Boy Scouts and soldiers. Boy Scouts salute, and soldiers salute. Unlike soldiers, Boy Scouts don’t salute one another. All the time I was a Boy Scout, the only thing I ever saluted was the flag.

And just like soldiers, Boy Scouts wear uniforms. Of course, never mind that postal workers, janitors, mechanics, and those of countless other occupations also wear uniforms. In some people’s minds, Boy Scouts look just like young soldiers, even though more of them probably go on to work for the Post Office or other uniformed services.

This misconception is apparently not new. The following editorial, originally from the Tacoma Labor Advocate, appeared in the Tacoma Times a hundred years ago, on August 31, 1914:

BOY SCOUTS ARE SOLDIERS

The Boy Scout movement has been opposed by members of union labor in almost all countries where it has been organized. Labor has claimed that this was simply being done to augment the army and navy and that in time of industrial strife the boy scouts would be used as soldiers wherever and whenever boys could be used. This has been denied, directly and directly, by many who were and are working for the boy scout movement. Now come dispatches to the effect that the boy scouts of some of the foreign countries are being used as soldiers in the war. Is it not plain that the same course will be taken here in the United States, that these boys will be used as soldiers whenever they can be to the advantage of those who profit by the use of the army or navy? Do not be fooled any longer, Mr. Working Man and Woman. The boy scout is merely one branch of the military forces of the country. They are simply being trained as soldiers by those who profit by the soldiery.

Elwood Hannsman: Boy Scout, Inventor, Lawyer

A hundred years ago today, the Washington Times of August 23, 1914, shows these scouts at Camp Archibald Butt, a camp operated by the Baltimore and Washington councils of the BSA between 1914 and 1916.

The scouts are identified as E.L. Maschmeyer, Mitchell Carroll, King Ridgeway, Paul Grove, George Read, Elwood Hannsman, and Randolph Carroll.

The scout second to the right is presumably the same Elwood Hannsman who went on in 1936 to secure U.S. Patent No. 2031830 for the windshield cleaner shown here. Mr. Hannsman was also issued U.S. Patents 2268072 for a direct reading gauge (1941) and 2100188 (1937) for another windshield cleaner. The assignee of all three patents was the Stewart-Warner Corporation of Chicago, which was presumably Mr. Hannsman’s employer.

And at some point, it would appear that Stewart-Warner sent Mr. Hannsman to law school, since he is listed as one of the attorneys for Stewart-Warner in a number of cases, including
Jiffy Lubricator Co. V. Stewart-Warner Corp., 177 F.2d 360 (4th Cir. 1949).

He was a member of the ABA Section of Patent Trade-Mark and Copyright Law. He was the Chairman of the Patent Sub-Section at the time of his death in 1954. (ABA Journal, June 1954).

Thomas Edison Nikirk, 1901-1953: Boy Scout and Amateur Radio Operator

T.E. Nikirk in 1923.
(QST, Feb. 1923, p. 29.)

When I look for historical items for this blog, I usually start by browsing old magazines or newspapers looking for items of interest. In most cases, they’re interesting in their own right as showing what life was like in the early part of the twentieth century, especially with respect to the new field of wireless. I usually make some effort to follow up on the people involved, but the trail usually grows cold, and I’m often left wondering what happened to the people who had one newsworthy accomplishment.

Such was not the case, however, for one Thomas Edison Nikirk of Washington, D.C. Mr. Nikirk, born in 1901, was a thirteen-year-old Boy Scout in Troop 10 when he made the pages of the Washington Times on several occasions in 1914. The May 31 issue reported that young Mr. Nikirk had earned Personal Health merit badge. The October 11 issue reported his earning the Cooking merit badge.

The Wireless Merit Badge wasn’t created until 1918, so it’s unlikely that Thomas ever earned it. But had it been available, it’s likely that he would have been one of the first, as evidenced by this article in the paper’s June 7 edition:

Thomas Edison Nikirk a Wireless Operator

Scout Thomas Edison Nikirk, of Troop 10, is now registered as a wireless operator with permission to operate anywhere in the United States. He obtained his papers the first part of last week and has the distinction of being the only Boy Scout wireless operator in the District. Tom is in his fourtenth year, and has been for the past seven months a student of H.B. DeGroot, who teaches a wireless class in this city.

According to the 1916 Call Book, Nikirk held two call signs. His main call, licensed at 411 12th St. SE, Washington, D.C., was 3VU. He also held the call 3EE, which the book indicates was for a portable station. (According to the same book, his “Elmer,” H.B. DeGroot, was the licensee of special land station 3ZH. It’s likely that DeGroot was affiliated with the Scout troop, since one Alfred DeGroot earned the rank of Eagle Scout on October 30, 1920, according to the National Eagle Scout Association database.)

According to the July 26 issue of the Times, young Mr. Nikirk, the ink barely dry on his new license, brought his wireless station to summer camp. The paper reports that a number of national and council officials visited Camp Archibald Butt at Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. A number of them stayed overnight, and were able to see a demonstration of 3VU’s capabilities. The paper reports that Nikirk was “experimenting with his wireless outfit, receiving and sending messages at long distances. Recently he attempted to receive a wireless message from Washington, but did not succeed with the twenty-foot aerial now in use at the camp.”

(The Camp was operated from 1914-16 by the Washington and Baltimore Councils of the BSA, and was named after Maj. Archibald Butt, an aide to Presidents Taft and Roosevelt, who died in the sinking of the Titanic. I’m not sure of his connection with Scouting, but Butt is shown in this 1912 photo along with Lord Baden-Powell and President Taft.)

Undoubtedly disappointed by the poor July performance of the aerial, Thomas promptly set out to improve on it. The paper’s August 9 issue carries the following dispatch from camp:

CAMP BUTT RADIO TOWER IMPROVED

Thirty-Foot Aerial Expected to Send Messages for 100-Mile Radius.

Following many futile attempts with the thirty-foot wireless tower at Camp Archibald Butt, Cheseapeake Beach, Md., to transmit messages at long distances, a new aerial, twice the height of the one found wanting, has been devised and is now in operation with Scout Thomas Nikirk, of Troop No. 10, acting as wireless operator. Nikirk asserts that with the aid of the newly constructed aerial, he will, under normal conditions of the weather, be able to send and receive messages within a radius of 100 miles.

At some point between 1916 and 1920, Thomas moved to California. The 1920 edition of the amateur call book shows him licensed for 500 watts as 6KA, and the general call book shows him as the licensee of experimental station 6XBC, both at 1050 West 89th St., Los Angeles, Calif.

In many cases when I research an old name, the trail will grow cold at this point. But Thomas Nikirk went on to be a prominent California Ham operator, and continued to hold the call 6KA (later to become W6KA) until his death in 1955.

By 1923, Nikirk had by all accounts one of the best amateur stations on the West Coast. He is featured in two articles in the February, 1923, issue of QST. The first article (from which the photo above is taken) reports that his signals had bridged the Pacific, and had been heard off the coast of China, at a point reported as being 5830 miles west of San Francisco. And in addition, his signals had been copied in Europe. After listing the stations heard off the coast of China, QST opines:

With all due credit to the entire list of successful stations, we think that 6ZZ [in Douglas, Arizona] and 6KA are the stars, for they are in the China list and they also got over to Europe, including all the long 2500-mile drag over the Rockies and across the United States. That is real performance and represents so much more of an accomplishment than the Atlantic crossing by eastern stations.

It goes on to describe “6KA, the ether-buster of T.E. Nikirk at Los Angeles,” whose antenna was a “T”, with five wires on 14 foot spreaders, running 57 feet long and 73 feet high, and with a 9-wire counterpoise covering an area measuring 45 by 70 feet.

The transmitter consisted of a single tube rated at about 250 watts. The normal antenna current was 12-13 amps. It reports that the plate current could be run up to 8000 volts! Normally, however, he ran closer to 3000 volts.

How he managed to get that much DC voltage on the plate is described in another article in the same issue, authored by Nikirk, entitled, “Synchronous Rectifiers for Plate Supply: A 3600 R.P.M. Rectifier.” In that article, he describes a mechanical rectifier consisting of a synchronous motor running at 3600 RPM, spinning a bakelite disc with two semicircular conductive edges. The high voltage AC from the transformer was fed to two brushes on opposite sides of the spinning disc. Two other brushes served as the output. The net effect was that the polarity reversed twice each cycle. Therefore, the output consisted of direct current.

According to a 1939 issue of Radio News, Nikirk served as chairman of the Federation of Radio Clubs. He is also the author of a Stray in the December 1946 issue of QST regarding the use of floor wax to repel water on transmission line.

According to his front-page obituary in the San Marino (Calif.) Tribune, July 14, 1955, he died of a heart attack. The paper reported that in addition to his ham station, he was the owner of an electronics store in Pasadena. He was a member of the Institute of Radio Engineers, the Pasadena Amateur Radio Club the ARRL, and a newly formed medical electronics group at Cal Tech. During World War 2, he served in the Air Force.

The call sign W6KA is still assigned, and is now held by the Pasadena Radio Club, of which Nikirk was a member.

Finally, it appears that Thomas Nikirk’s Troop 10 was in existence until about 1940. According to the NESA database, nineteen Scouts from that troop earned the rank of Eagle between 1919 and 1940. As noted above, one of those Scouts was Alfred DeGroot, who became an Eagle Scout in 1920, and who I suspect was the son of 3ZH. Surprisingly, one of those Troop 10 Eagle Scouts was science fiction author and religion founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to the NESA database, his Eagle Board of Review date was March 28, 1924.

The Washington, D.C. Council, of which Troop 10 was a part, is now known as the National Capital Area Council of the BSA, and covers much of Maryland and Virginia, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands. From the list of “Troop 10” Eagle Scouts, it appears that the troop number was reused multiple times, since there were Scouts from both Maryland and Virginia who became Eagles in the years 1959-1964, 1973-1977, 1989-1999, and 2001 through the present. The current caretaker of the Scouting legacy of Scout Thomas Edison Nikirk is Troop 10 of the Piedmont District of the National Capital Area Council, located in Warrenton, Virginia.

A Parental Kidnapping Solved, 1919

It appears that the pages of Boys Life magazine were used to solve a parental kidnapping case in 1919.

This ad looks somewhat out of place in the November, 1919, issue of Boys Life magazine. It reports that Graydon Hubbard, age 12, was an active member of his Scout Organization at Brookville, Indiana, when he and his brother Harold, age 8, were “stolen from their home early last July.”

The ad goes on to say that Graydon “will undoubtedly make an effort to get in touch with the nearest Boy Scout Unit to the point where they are located,” adding ominously, “if they are in this country.”

“If any Boy Scout–or Scout Master–learn their location–and will advise the Cincinnati Office of the William J. Burns Int. Detective Agency, Inc., of their address–upon receipt and verification of same–the above reward will be paid.”

The advertisement appears to have been successful, and it seems that some Scout in Riverside, California, must have collected the reward money. The November 30, 1919, issue of the Indianapolis Star reports that the boys’ mother, Mrs. M.P. Hubbard, was indicted in Indiana on a charge of kidnapping after the father, M.P. Hubbard, had been granted custody.

The boys were returned to Indiana from Riverside,California, by the chief of police and his wife, along with a private detective from the agency named in the advertisement. The article reports that Mrs. Hubbard had assumed a different last name and “had taught the children to go by that name.” The article goes on to say that she had recently been named defendant in a lawsuit brought by the former husband.

More Radio Scouting, 1922

This photo, form the New York Tribune, July 9, 1922, shows William Hodson, a Boy Scout from Troop 108, Brooklyn, along with two other scouts, operating a receiver. But it’s not just any receiver. It’s a “three-coil duo lateral regenerative set with loud speaker attachment.”

Radio Scouting in 1920

Among the many hats I wear is that of counselor for the Radio Merit Badge. I was also on the staff of K2BSA at the 2013 National Scout Jamboree.

Radio has a long history with scouting. The first edition of the Scout Handbook includes several pages on how to construct an “up-to-date wireless apparatus for stationary use in the home or at the meeting place of each patrol.” Wireless Merit Badge was originated in 1918 and was renamed Radio in 1923. And in 1920, scouts were called upon to relay government bulletins to their communities. This small item appeared in the Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner of May 19, 1920.

It reports that the Naval radio station in New York was sending out a daily message to scouts from the National Council of the BSA, “predicated upon appreciation of the war service of radio operators who learned wireless telegraphy when they were scouts.” It reports that the signals had been received from 42 states, including all on the Pacific coast.

More details, including the illustration shown above, are given in the July 1920 issue of Boys Life. The message was sent each evening from station NAH at 9:30 PM Eastern time at 25 words per minute, with a 1500 meter (what we would today call 200 kHz) spark signal. The 30-50 word messages “always contain something of interest to boys. Sometimes they are from the Department of Agriculture or some other government department, with a request for each operator to make the message known to the public immediately.” The recipient was expected to have a system of reaching those in his neighborhood, such as “farmers’ telephone, semaphore, Morse flag, blinker or heliograph,” or even a “good horse, a bicycle, motorcycle, automobile, sea-scout cutter or other vehicle.”

The Boys’ Life article concludes by admonishing every scout to have arrangements to receive the daily NAH bulletins, and to do his part when a test message or other urgent communication comes through.

The June 1920 issue of Boys’ Life points out that “neither the army, navy, postal service nor any land telegraph or telephone company can cover the country as quickly, at present, as the scouts will be able to do if they grasp their opportunity and make use of the Navy’s cooperation.” The article also admonishes that “every tenderfoot, second-class and first-class scout should consider signal practice with buzzer sets or radio sets at once” to avail themselves of this opportunity, the value of which to our government would be beyond calculation.

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