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While watching Curious George on PBS Kids with my four year old, I learned something. In the episode we viewed–“Curious George, Metal Detective”–George needs a metal detector to find a toy robot he’s lost in the sand, but the one he’s borrowed has run out of batteries. “How about making one?” his scientist friend suggests. Make one? “It’s easy,” she explains: simply by taping an AM radio and calculator together, you can make your own metal detector. George tries it, and–lo and behold–finds his missing toy.
Really? I wondered. Was this PBS show feeding my skeptical children science fiction?
I quickly googled the notion, and apparently, it works! Watch the video below for a tutorial on building your own deluxe model:
Lessons learned? You’re never too old to learn from Curious George, PBS, or the fellow in this video. And radios are clearly even more versatile than even I guessed.
Now, back to metal detecting…Is that another soda can?
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, 13dka, who shares the following guest post: Revisiting the Belka's "pseudo-sync detector": A sync detector crash course! by 13dka "It’s usually hard to assess whether or not a sync detector helped with a particular dip in the signal or not, unless you have 2 samples of the…
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike, who writes with the following question: How important is AM Sync for a portable radio? Is it essential or a deal breaker? That's a great question, Mike, and one I don't think I've directly addressed it here on the SWLing Post oddly enough. Synchronous…
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dave Zantow (N9EWO), who shares the following: For your listening pleasure. Here is the best video yet showing the Icom IC-R8600’s Sync Detector in use. Sounds like Icom “finally” got the Sync Detector performance right with the R8600. Appears to greatly reduce fading distortion,…
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3 thoughts on “How to turn your AM radio into a metal detector”
Very good, A radio and calculator – nice. can i use this to find gold metals underground?
Awesome tips for this buddy! I can’t believe you can use AM radio into a metal detector!