Tip for crystal set builders.

[catman]

G'day all, well crystal sets are antique! Just a tip for anyone building one with 'modern' diodes, genuine germanium diodes are getting increasingly hard to get (at least in this country), although the silicon schottky 'equivalents' aren't bad at all (e.g. BAT46), and simply by putting several in parallel, one ends up with a much better 'single' diode with reduced 'turn on voltage' and negligible reduction in back resistance 'leakage'.

You can't do this with genuine germanium diodes as the 'back leakage' considerably worsens. I use four BAT46's in parallel in my crystal set and the performance is much better than a single diode, especially with weak RF signals. Regards, Felix (vk4fuq) aka catman.