I spent several hours in the following days soldering parts together until it was finished. Now it was time to plug in the microphone and turntable to see if worked. The first good sign was the fact that the tubes lit. I searched for a record to test with. The antenna was only a ten foot piece of insulated wire, but it would do for testing. When I turned my radio receiver on, I kept tuning across the dial until I finally found the sound of my record playing. Wow, I was on the air!
The next few days I worked after school and in my spare time to check the microphone and rig a better antenna. The instructions warned that it was against the law to use an antenna longer than the ten foot wire connected to the transmitter, so I reasoned that a longer antenna would work better.
Before long there was a 50 to 75 ft. antenna wire going from the house to a large Catalpa tree in the yard. This wire was connected to a ten foot piece of pipe tied to the tree trunk as high as I could place it. The coverage in the areas around the house was good, but it was time to see if the signal could reach the nearest neighbor at least a half to three quarters a mile away.
When it became available, I used the family car to test the signal. Since it was difficult to get volunteer deejays, I would choose the longest playing thirty three and a third album I could find and start it on the turntable before I left the house. The discovery that I made about the signal was that it seemed to piggyback on the electric power wires in the area. That made the signal carry to the nearest community.
The information that the signal was getting to the nearest houses was the first step in market research. I needed a representative for the door to door information gathering. My pool of qualified researchers was very limited. Which one of my two brothers would be both qualified and willing to do the job? ***to be continued.
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