Curious case of the Steel Joule Thief

This shows a blocking oscillator circuit commonly called a ‘Joule Thief’ that uses two coils of plastic coated steel wire instead of copper wire. The modified JT circuit is my ‘Penny Oscillator’ circuit. I show it being tuned using an external loop antenna tuner that I made for a AM radio project. The curious question is— does the antenna tuner simply tune the oscillator or does it perhaps enhance the circuit by adding in some radio signal’s energy? Ambient light energy is main power for the device by way of a tiny solar panel but does the antenna tuner draw in additional energy from radio waves–or not.

Here is the video where I show this loop antenna tuner working with my homemade AM radio:

Here is a video by someone else showing a commercially available loop antenna tuner and how it works:

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