Click Any Picture For Larger View

January 2022 Quite a few years ago before I retired from IBM and before the Internet, a fellow co-worker who knew I fooled around with old radios and that I was an amateur (ham) radio operator, said he had a set of coils form a radio and wondered if I would like to have them. Not being one to turn down radio related stuff, I accepted his offer. He brought me a set of four coils and said if he could find the radio he would bring that to me also, but alas, he never found the radio. I had no idea what radio these coils went to so they were stored with lots of other radio stuff and forgotten about. A few months ago I ran across these coils. Upon researching the Internet, I discovered they were to a radio that as a youngster in high-school I lusted for but never had the funds to purchase, the Allied Radio Knightkit Ocean Hopper. So now with a set of coils and no Ocean Hopper I set about attempting to acquire the radio. Searching online auctions I quickly discovered that they do not come cheap, even not in the best of condition, so I decided it was time to attempt to construct a reproduction unit. Below tells the story.

This Knight Ocean Hopper receiver is a three tube regenerative set covering the broadcast band. Additional coils extend the coverage from 165 kHz to 35 mHz. The coils plug in through the trap door on top of the cabinet. Tubes lineup is a 35W4 rectifier, 12AT6 dual triode as a regenerative detector and a 50C5 audio amplifier. There pin jacks for headphones, fhanestock clips for antenna connection and screw terminals for an external speaker.. The cabinet is made of wood and I found material on-line that very closely matches the orginal covering. The front panel was done using the silk screening method. This was my first attempt at silk screening, the first try was not successful, but the second yielded good results. The sheet metal for the chassis and front panel came from the cover of a discarded desktop computer. Pictures show the stages of construction along with ads and schematic.   One of the hardest parts to reproduce was the main tuning dial. It took several tries to finally get a fair reproduction. I welcome your comments, if you have a moment please read/sign the guest book. Counter courtesy of Webcounter