Welcome to my Dr. Frankenstien-style lab. The midi (that might be?) playing is "My Mom Still Cleans My Room", by MxPx.

... proving that they'll let just any whacko out there buy a soldering iron

This page reflects some of my more bizarre experiments involving electronics, computers, radio, and all strange points beyond.

Got one of those obnoxious clock radios that wakes you in the morning to your limited choice of local Morning Show psychos? Why not tinker with it a little (*evil laugh*) and convert it to a worldwide shortwave reciever? Common sense dictates that a modified $8 clock radio is not going to work as well as a good general coverage communications reciever, but, so I've found, it'll at least pick up the stronger signals on the shortwave bands. The actual modification is easy.. just open up the radio, turn it on, and set it to AM. Back up the little red screw as far as possible, and open up two of the four little trimmer capacitors on top of the tuner. (Two of them are used only for FM; they will have no effect on the AM reception). Wrap one end of a piece of wire around the nasty looking wax-goobered AM loopstick antenna inside, and hook the other end up to a shortwave antenna of your choice. (I find that a random indoor wire running around my bookshelves works okay.) Assuming you still have it powered up, you should now be able to turn the knob, and hear at least a few stations. (note: the tuner will now have a very coarse, jumpy action, and will no longer tune any regular AM broadcast band frequencies. However, if you left the rest of those pretty colored screws alone, and left the FM trimmers *about* where they used to be, your FM stations will still be in just about the same places on the dial.) From my home in Kendall, Florida, I'm able to hear Radio Netherlands (5675 Khz), Radio Canada International (?), Radio Unica in Coral Gables (?), and World Harvest Radio (YUCK!), mostly in the middle to upper areas of the dial (marked 900-1650Khz). I performed this 'mod on two radios, a $8 Zenith clock radio (complete with obnoxious, loose dial hardware), and an old JCPenney clock radio with stereo FM and a smoother cord-driven dial. I'm not sure of the exact frequency ranges on them, but I think the Zenith is about 3.5-6 Mhz, with FM offset a little bit, and the JCPenney is 4-6 Mhz (FM unaffected). Both of these radios are vastly more sensitive than my Sony 12-band ICF-7700 reciever... oh well... More bizarre stuff coming soon... Click here to escape.