Did you ever attend a "silent" dancing party? The dancers wear earphones and only they hear the music. The effect is eerie... By JOHN POTTER SHIELDS Y , you can hear loud and clear with no physical connection between your earphones and radio or hi-fi. What's more you can hear when others cannot. The loop system is great for getting the sound from your television without interrupting grand- a's nap. With loop listening a housewife can keep up with her chores while hearing her favorite programs without trailing wires and without having the radio or hi-fi blasting through the house. Here's how your loop system works and how to build it, Operation, as the signals flow JUNE, 1968 through the transmitting coil, they gener- ate a magnetic field around the coil which varies in proportion with the currents. The field produced by the transmitting coil in- duces currents in the receiving coil which are a facsimile of the signals applied to the transmitting coil. These currents in the re- ceiving coil are applied directly to phones or an amplifier for further amplification. The action is exactly the same as a trans- former. For Maximum Range, the transmitting loop should be as large as possible and con- sist of many turns. To wind the coil, trace a Ml4. WIRE loop and epesker to select line conforming to the desired overall di- mensions on your workbench. Drive 1-in, nails equal distances around the marking to form a coil form. When the winding is completed, remove the coil from the form and secure its turns in place with tape. Re- move the insulation from the leads’ and attach them to a convenient length of ordinary "zip cord.” Due to its low impedance, the transmit- ting loop is connected to the transformer terminals of the particular amplifier being used. Due to the low impedance of the out- put transformer secondary, #20 or heavier wire should be used to wind the transmit- ting loop. The coil should not consist of ‘more than 50 turns. If you like, a S.P.D.T. switch can be included in the setup so that either the loop or speaker is connected to the output transformer. ATERALS UST—TRASITOR ANPLIFER Bie og nae EY 25 eld 15 volt ministre elt ap (Okan £0872) a nce & ose Pe bee RERISAia re ee fo, SRA ed SI nw ean 12 2. SCHEMATIC for Wansisot amplifier which boosts soune ‘The Receiving Loop should be as large in diameter as possible. Since the receiving oop will normally work into medium to high impedance inputs, it should have as many turns as are practical as this will in- crease both its sensitivity and impedance match. As mentioned earlier, the receiving loop can be connected directly to a pair of phones for short range operation. The phones should have an impedance of be. tween 500 and 2,000 ohms. A self-contained amplifier can be used to considerably boost the operating range. With the transistor amplifier between the receiving loop and phones, the operating range was extended to about 20 feet. A five inch coil wound with 100 turns of #30 wire yielded an operating range of about 15 feet. The transistorized amplifier is straight- forward with the exception that a common base input stage is used rather than the more conventional common emitter con- figuration. This provides a better imped- ance match between the receiving coil and the amplifiers input. ‘The output trans former shown in the schematic matches the last transistor to the four ohm stereo phones. Placement of the receiving coil need not be a problem if a reasonably small loop is used. ‘As Much Power As Possible should be used to drive the transmitting loop in order that the amount of amplification between the receiving loop and phones can be kept to a minimum. Excessive amplification at the receiving end can cause an objectional amount of hum and spurious noise. The ratio of the energy emitted to the sur- rounding radiation’ should be as high as possible. . SCIENCE end MECHANICS