The "Sky King" Solid State Regen Radio

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At this time I decided to create the permanent front panel. It was a bit premature but I was impatient.

Cardboard and foil were replaced with plywood and copper clad plastic. I would end up with an extra hole when the set was complete.

Another test, again with the Peebles antenna tuner. Testing the RF amp. The switch in the middle of the panel was a "Broad/Narrow" tuning switch. I couldn't get it to work right, and since the set has a fine tuning control I removed it.       The RF coil was ineffective so a new RF coil was made to go inside the main coil. It still didn't work very well. While deciding whether or not to add more turns, I tried connecting the RF amp directly to the antenna tune control and it worked very well that way. The finished radio should have looked something like this, but after connecting the antenna tuner I found that the coil and its switch weren't even needed. The tuner worked better with just the variable capacitor. The mounts for the coil became binding posts. The hole for the coil tap switch was filled in... .... with a variable capacitor to the antenna. This is actually in the schematic but I had left it out.

It's starting to look like a radio. Knobs are getting hard to find. These came from Mike Peebles.   The tickler coil had too many windings. I removed them one at a time, but took off one too many. A new tickler was wound using red colored wire, but the main coil remained green because radio waves travel better through green wire.   Here is how it looked from the back in March of 2015. Almost done, so I thought. Adding and removing parts once they are soldered in starts to make things look messy, but one cool trick I found was that because there are two unused taps on the "band switch," you can wind a coil, connect it to an unused tap, and drop it inside the main coil. The tickler coil doesn't care, as long as the coil winding is in the right direction.

By March, 2015 it was time to give the radio a name, but not just any name. It had to be a COOL name like short wave radios from the1950s and 1960s. For example: Eico - Space Ranger Lafayette - EXPLOR-AIR Radio Shack - Globe Patrol Weskit - Space Rambler Knight - Ocean Hopper, Space Spanner, Span Master and Star Roamer Hallicrafters  -  Sky Buddy, Sky Champion, Sky Courier, and Super Skyrider In keeping with the spirit of these names, the name of this radio shall henceforth and forthwith be Sky King, Model # N5348A Sky King's plane - FAA registration number N5348A.   Next