When I was a teenager, I built a transmitter out of a bunch of parts I had about. It even worked rather than going up in a puff of smoke, but the President never called and there were no glowing editorials about how I was the smartest person since Einstein, lol.
“When I was a teenager, I built a transmitter out of a bunch of parts I had about.”
Exactly! Back in the late 80s when I was a lunatic young teen, I built a binary counter using one of those Heathkit type of kits. A teacher in high school saw that I had quite an interest in computers and figured he’d get me hooked on digital electronics (which he did, and I can’t thank him enough for it as prior to that I called electronics “scary” ... I had major confidence issues)
When I first powered it up, it did nothing though one chip got really hot! Just as I was about to call it a digital heater, the power supply tripped. Turns out I soldered components on the wrong side of the board :-). I mean, it made sense to solder the components so that you could see the entire silkscreen :-). There were directions I could have followed, but those are for rank amateurs and people that like to get things right the first time :-).
I got another kit and it worked great!
That scumbag Reagan never called me up for a trip to the White House :-) .