Bob Crow III's Interests and Hobbies Web Site

Some background on Bob Crow III

I have always been interested in science and technology.  My grandfather was an engineer who graduated in the second graduating class of General Motors Institute.  He ultimately became the superintendent of Quality Assurance at AC Spark Plug, a division of General Motors in Flint, MI.  At home, he subscribed to Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, National Geographic and several other magazines.  I often browsed through these when I visited.  Granddad would often discuss various articles with me.  One discussion that sticks out in my mind is pertinent to technology today.  The discussion involved comparing the energy available in one cup of gasoline, against the volume of hydrogen gas needed (at atmospheric pressure) to produce equivalent energy.  The ratio is HUGE:  1,642 to 1.  I can only guess that somebody was probably thinking about running the world on hydrogen - even way back then...  Not very smart.  Hydrogen does not have much energy density.

A local radio station once visited our elementary school in the late 1950's.  They brought a tape recorder with them and recorded some of the kids telling stories, saying different things, singing, etc.  Although I cannot say for sure, I believe that they used a portable Ampex, model 600 with either "Irish" or "Scotch" recording tape.  It could have been either.  At 7 years old, Irish and Scotch were the same to me.  Several months later the librarian introduced the kids to the library.  I looked through many of the books but could not find anything that was very interesting.  I declared it "boring".  The librarian asked me what kind of book that I might like to read.  I asked: "How about a book about  recorders?".  Well, the librarian, plus a few others looked everywhere and came up empty.  They DID however find the definition of "recorder" in the dictionary - which is a musical instrument, something like a flute.  They thought it was odd that a 7 year old boy would be interested in flutes...  I told them that a musical instrument was not what I had in mind.  From this anecdotal experience, I must conclude that even back in the 1950's, the average school teacher wasn't very tuned into technology and technical things.  I then asked if they had any books about radio, electricity, TV, etc.  No.  Mostly just silly novels and fiction...

Outside of school, my grandfather found some interesting books for me to read.  He bought a book for me that showed how to wind electromagnets, make your own electric motors and low power (lemonade-type) batteries - out of common household materials.  It also included various static electricity experiments that you could perform.  I also learned about electrical wiring and the differences between alternating current and direct current by playing with 1-1/2 and 6 volt dry cells, flashlight bulbs, small motors, knife switches and wiring up my Lionel train set.  As the Christmas toys came and went, I accumulated chemistry sets, a microscope, a telescope and even a toy Van DeGraff generator - capable of making 1 million electron volts!  Grandad once went to a radio/TV repair shop that was going out of business and bought a lot of other electronic "stuff" for me to experiment with.  This included a volt-ohm meter, some good wire strippers, resistors, power transistors, mylar capacitors and 250 feet of Teflon insulated wire.  That Teflon coated wire was absolutely useless as "hook-up" wire.  It was almost impossible to strip the insulation without cutting the wire itself.  He didn't know that a special heated tool is required to strip Teflon insulated wire properly.  It also resisted bending and would not retain it's shape...

When I was about 12, I discovered an old Sears Silvertone AM shortwave radio in the attic.  This was originally a large console radio with a DC field-powered 12" speaker (not permanent magnet), but the cabinet had been scrapped.  I believe that this radio had 8 or 10 octal base tubes - with the plate voltage (about 350 volts) exposed on a few of them.  I was old enough to know what an electric shock was, so knew not to touch anything except the wooden front panel knobs.  Wow.  That radio was fascinating.  It covered the AM broadcast band up to about 18 megacycles and was pretty sensitive.  Using a random length of outdoor wire, I could easily hear WWV, the time signal in Fort Collins, Colorado on 5 and 10 megacycles (mc).  CHU, the time signal from Canada was VERY strong on 7.335 mc.  I could hear ships talking back and forth to each other somewhere down around 2 mc.  Even some aircraft still used some of these frequencies.  I recall listening to BBC London, various Spanish broadcasts, some French, German and Italian.  The wacky chirps and heterodynes of shortwave radio were a lot of fun to listen to.  During this time (at 9 or 10 yrs old) I also figured out how to connect the speaker output of our stereo record player to the radio's amplifier input section.  This made everything sound pretty loud.  I added a crystal microphone salvaged from a toy tape recorder and had a lot of fun playing DJ with my new Beatle records.

Around this same time I bought some Knight Kit C-100, 100 milli-watt walkie-talkie kits.  These cost $9.95 each.  This was my first attempt at soldering.  I assembled one of them.  Dad built the other.  Neither one worked, so we sent them back to Allied Radio to have them fix our mistakes - for a small repair fee.  Dad recalls that the walkie-talkie that I built had fewer soldering errors than his - but I think that he is just being generous.  We got them back and they worked - about as well as any other squeaky, squealy 3 or 4 transistor regenerative receiver/transmitter.  The range was reliable for about 25 feet.  Carbon-zinc 9 volt batteries back then were just terrible.  A fresh battery could be "exhausted" in about 1/2 an hour - and they were expensive.

In 1966, at 14 years old I saved enough money from my 5 mile (!) paper route (including up and down various mountains/hills) in New Jersey to buy a 5 watt, single channel Knight Kit Citizens Band (CB) transceiver kit from Allied Radio.  I also bought a Hygain ground plane antenna.  The radio cost $49.95 as I recall.  This unit had variable receive tuning that covered all 23 channels and a front panel socket for insertion of various transmit crystals.  The tunable receive drifted all over the place.  The dial indicator was practically worthless.  The stock microphone was very poor.  It modulated slightly better than a dead carrier. I  assembled it.  It didn't work (typical of most of my Knight Kits). So I sent it back to Allied Electronics to have them repair it.  I then applied for a CB license and answered all of the questions (truthfully) on the FCC application.  The application was rejected and I was asked to clarify some of my answers.  One of the questions was "Are you 18 years of age or older?".  My answer was no.  I was 14.  That was a show stopper.  You had to be 18+ to get a license at that time.  I knew that, but figured that it was worth trying anyway, thinking that they might not catch it.

Shortly after this, we moved to Mexico City.  My new best friend down there got a beautiful fully transistorized 23 channel Lafayette HB-600 CB transceiver ($219) and an HA-300B ($69?) two watt walkie-talkie for getting good grades.  Wow.  His expensive, high-quality fully assembled and tuned Lafayette equipment just blew away my single channel Knight Kit.  So, I lobbied strongly for, and received a Lafayette Comstat 25A ($139) from my parents in 1967 when we were back in the U.S. on Christmas vacation.  I was absolutely thrilled with it's performance.  Back in Mexico, the Mexican FCC was almost non-existent.  So unlicensed operation was no problem.  My handle/alias was the "Modulation Master".  I could talk "skip" to the US on almost any day of the week putting just 5 watts into my old Hygain ground plane antenna.  I also bought a 5 watt, 3 channel Lafayette Dyna Com 5 walkie-talkie (W/T).  A set of rechargeable nickel cadmium batteries kept things going.   I took very good care of those batteries and probably charged and discharged them several hundred times.  Ordinary batteries would have cost a fortune.  I took this W/T to school several times (recall that we still lived in Mexico) and once contacted my hometown of Flint, MI - just standing on the playground.  I gave the guy that I was talking to in Flint known as Mr. Roy (alias: Roy Sawtelle) the phone number of my grandparents.  Roy called them up on the phone to say "hi" for me.  That was an amazing feat to be able to talk "skip" from Mexico City to Flint, MI using only a handheld W/T with it's internal "whip" antenna.  I'm sure that people today think that's no big deal now that we have cell phones.  Cell phones and cheap long-distance rates basically wiped out hobbies like CB and ham radio in general.

During high school in Mexico City, I was one of a few students that worked in their radio and TV studio. That was the first time that I ever operated a professional tape recorder:  Ampex model 351, full-track mono. I also assisted the school's broadcasting instructor who was from Australia (Mr. Scott). Mr. Scott freelanced in radio and often provided program material for the Mutual Radio Network.  He also developed shows that were aired on XE-VIP radio (1560 kc).  I assisted with some of the production work. As I recall, XE-VIP probably had 7 Ampex AG-350's and one or two old 351's.  All of these machines were mono of course except for one two track AG-350, used for production work.

These interesting "toys" and experiences clearly set the stage... for my hobbies and interests - today!

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