Πολυκυκλωματιστης 1002, 501B, Two fantastic electriconic kit construction games

Polykyklomatic 1002 and a smaller but powerful moder 501B.


They were on sale in Athens during the 70s, 80s.


They had springs to instantly connect electronic components.


The heart was 2 germanium transistors on either side around the central area. It had a great manual with drawings even of electrons as little kid creatures flowing or dancing in the circuits, inside wires etc. It even explained how capacitors are charged or discharged so that one can feel the time constant by lighting up a small bulb.


One could built a radio, sirens, a miracle amplifier (single ended class A).


Everything was powered by a 9V battery.


My dad built for me the first construction schematic and showed me the way.


There was a tiny output transformer too.


If one connected a larger car radio full range speaker the sound was fantastic.


At some point the 2 kits were interconnected. So the AM receiver came from the 1002 and the power amplifier from the 501B.


Then it was possibly the Sony headphones that were connected. There was of course a volume control, even just a few milliwatts can be very loud on class A amplifiers.


My grandfathers and my great grandfather were very happy listening to the radio news at pristine sound quality from this class A (electrons flowing all the time) amplifier.


There were also the excellent Josty kits from Denmark. We were buying these from the Athens shop radio Katouma. My cousin also had built a HF-65 kit so we could both broadcast at FM with this tiny circuit board. The coil was printed on the circuit board itself. He had connected 2 antennas for increasing the range. In the afternoons we we talk to each other from our houses and we could hear each other from a Metz FM Quartz PLL tuner, made in Germany, part of our parents hi-fi system. There were LEDs to show how strong was the recieved signal. We were proud, happy when the green LEDs were lit 5 out of 5.


Music was transmitted too. A small omni microphone, the less expensive one could imagine, was pressed against a Beyer Dynamic open headphone and the Metz amplifier was cranked on treble so that FM preemphasis could be achieved and that the result would sound as correctly as possible to the listener's brain from a JVC portanle radio. This setup could broadcast at excellent sound quality many block of flats away. The Metz record player was the source.