While channel surfing one evening, I stumbled upon a show that was interesting enough that I actually put the remote down for a few moments. Here were several groups of grown men, scavenging through piles of junk and assembling devices that would launch a projectile. At first I thought I was watching a program similar to those "let's see if we can recreate how the ancient Egyptians did it" type of show that comes up on PBS every now and then. I soon realized I was wrong: it was a competition to see which group of people could assemble the most successful "weapon" in a given amount of time. It was part of the "Junkyard Wars" series that appears on The Discovery Channel (get all the details and a broadcast schedule).

To get a somewhat different description of the show, let me take a brief snippet from the official web site:

If you locked Tim Allen, Mad Max and Monty Python in a garage, you'd end up with Junkyard Wars--the engineering contest of harebrained schemes, incredible tools, and lots and lots of duct tape. This program pits two teams of tool-toting gearheads against one another to see who can create the biggest, fastest or strongest whatever with parts they scrounge out of a junkyard.

Because I've been trained as an engineer, this program really appeals to me. How would I approach the problem? Could I come up with better ideas? To be honest, I'm amazed at the creativity and ingenuity these contestants show. If you're intrigued and would like to check it out, note that Season 4 in the US ramps up with a first-round competition the first week of May.

This program bears some resemblance to another engineering-related show, Comedy Central's "BattleBots." Doesn't it seem like geek-appeal is really the "in" thing these days? (Finally some recognition beyond our own little communities!) In this competition, people bring their homebrewed robots and put them in a walled-in "arena" where the remote-controlled creations battle to the "death." It's fun to watch the crash and burn, but I actually derive much more enjoyment out of Junkyard Wars, watching the design process over the participant's shoulders.

For an electronics engineer, however, both shows lack something. They're geared primarily to mechanical design, so our skills as circuit designers aren't really utilized. However, I've stumbled across some projects that do combine the ingenuity of these competitions with electronic design. Here the activities aren't organized in a formal competition, but in this fashion everyone can compete, not just the people selected to appear on the TV show.

For instance, I was particularly interested when I ran across the work of an individual who has taken the concept a step into the realm of circuits, basically applying the idea of "Junkyard Wars" towards the construction of a simple transmitter for the ham bands. Admittedly inspired by that TV show, Rick Weber (W9QZ) allowed himself only one commercial part: a 1928-vintage vacuum tube. He constructed all other parts from non-electronic junk common to any household. He made capacitors from soda cans and packing tape. For a variable condenser, he started with a cinnamon-stick tin and telescoped it into copper drain pipe. He found similarly creative solutions for the tube socket, grid resistor, variable capacitor, RF choke and tank coil. If you'd like to examine Rick's handiwork, surf on over to his website.

While Rick built his radio for fun, people in years past have had somewhat more serious intentions when designing one from nonconventional components. An example that might come to mind for many electronics designers are the classic "foxhole radios" that GIs would put together in the field. For a nice rundown on some of these radios and common construction techniques, a good site is http://freeweb.pdq.net/headstrong/foxhole.HTM.

That site also goes on to briefly describe how soldiers in POW camps would attack the same problem, even though they had far fewer resources and cooperation of those around them. One of the most detailed accounts comes from the transcript of a recording by Lt Col RG Wells, who built a shortwave receiver (no simple cat's whisker AM receiver) while in a Japanese POW camp. Click here for the full story.

I must admit that I've got the greatest admiration for what Lt Col Wells and his cohorts accomplished. For instance, to make insulation to put between layers of a tin-foil capacitor, they soaked newspaper in coconut oil. As a high-impedance grid-leak resistor, they took a piece of string and rubbed it with the material left over from the burning of cinnamon bark that had some impurities in it. Eventually they discovered that a length of roughly an inch was about right to get in the neighborhood of a megohm. Then they needed insulated wire, in particular for a power supply and rectifier. They started with the bare bee wire they could get their hands on. They stretched the wire out and rubbed palm oil on it, thickening it with a bit of flour. When they heating this mixture, the flour bound the palm oil together and formed a fairly good insulation.

These various sites contain many more examples, all of which I find fascinating reading. It's amazing what we can accomplish when we master the basic principles. And I guess that's one of the lessons here, that the basics serve us very well. If you ever have trouble convincing some students or entry-level engineers that there's any benefit to mastering the fundamentals of physics and electronics, here's something to show them. Ask them how well they would do in such a situation. For us it's not a matter of survival in the same fashion it would've been to some POWs. But with this kind of knowledge our designs and our ability to do our jobs will reach a higher level. Besides, sometimes this kind of messing around with circuits is just plain fun!

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