Foxhole Radios

I am having a few regrets about a project that I started. It is a constant effort for me to try to find activities that students will find interest in, so they can apply some of the math skills we go over to real life scenarios and situations. I have come up with some great activities, and then of course some not so great activities. Recently, I launched a radio project where students were to apply their knowledge of sine and cosine waves to sound. One of the focuses I thought I would direct their attention to as an application was the sound we hear from radios. I thought it would be neat to have the students build fox hole radios, and then have them make a website about how amplitude, frequency, period, and key points of these sinusoids apply to radios. Here is my radio project guide:

Radio Project Objective Sheet and Rubric by

The problem with this project is the students are more interested in getting their radios to work. I keep having to remind them that the radio is not the biggest portion of the task. The creation of an informative website about sinusoids- how to graph them and the applications of them- is the major part of the project... It has been a learning experience. I am just still not sure if what they are learning is what I want them to learn.  I want ask out, and see if anyone will help with what is going wrong with our radios. No one, including myself have gotten the radio to work yet.

Here is a picture:

Can anyone tell me what is wrong? The left blue cable is the connection to the antenna which is out the window and hanging over our school building. The other is plugged into the wall to be grounded.

The following links are to my students' websites in progress:

http://pink-panthers-radio.blogspot.com

http://purplepenguinsradios.blogspot.com

http://prairiedogradios.blogspot.com

http://itsourradio.blogspot.com

http://trigfunctionsnradios.blogspot.com

http://radi-what.blogspot.com