A Crummy Commercial

A wooden transistor ? https://spectrum.ieee.org/wood-transistor https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37094114/ Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

A customer had a build problem with a kit.  I suggested a couple of things to check and he was able to fix the problem.  Wonderful, right ? But he sent a picture of the problem area and I noticed that the chip in the picture wasn't the correct chip.  He assured me that the kit worked OK. I finally realized that he had sent a picture from the build section of the manual which highlighted where the build problem was located.  That build part of the manual was meant to cover multiple kits with different chips.  So it showed a different chip than I had expected.   In other words I didn't recognize my own handiwork  !   Two lessons learned: 1) believe the customer ! 2) don't go looking for trouble, you will find it even if it isn't there :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I found out that there was a last time buy on the SA602/612 mixers in SO last November, heck ! Digi-key does suggest subs: But look at those prices !  Also, the packaging is unfriendly. I had thought about re-doing the LF Converter kit for SO when I ran out the the DIP parts in stock but now the kit will be dropped when the parts run out. I had dropped the SA602 chip from the parts store.   Maybe it is time to do something with those LM389 chips ? :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Today is the 37th anniversary of the brief takeover by Captain Midnight of the HBO satellite feed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_signal_intrusion BTW here is the inflated price: Also, that $5000 fine was the equivalent of 32 years of an HBO subscription.  Isn't the idea of a secret identity to shield you from this kind of thing ? Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/a-japanese-company-is-about-to-attempt-a-moon-landing/ Also, dealing with dust is hard: https://www.cnet.com/science/space/chinas-first-mars-rover-may-have-run-into-trouble-on-the-dusty-planet/ This has already been covered: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/06/dust.html Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I found a bunch of these little red pencils: They were given out by Time magazine as an enticement to subscribe. Much smaller than a standard pencil: One of these will be perfect for scratching items off my grocery list when at Mann's store. Only a couple of them had the printing, guess Time Inc. grew more ambivalent about advertising their name or maybe they felt that the little red pencil was an established icon ? Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

QB12 has been traded to the NY Jets.   No big deal, hope he does well, he's got a new chip installed on his shoulder so he does well with something to prove.  I wouldn't be surprised if he helps the Jets win a lot of games. Lombardi left the Packers, these things happen.  I'm just glad it is finally done. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I saw this post on the Schulman Auctions Face page: It certainly is in good shape: Deflating the price: The 1963 Allied catalog listing: So the auction price isn't really that high considering that it deflates to less than a quarter of the 1963 dollar price. But I still wouldn't buy one, something like that I'd fool with a little bit and then it would sit there gathering dust - just not in the acquisitive mode anymore. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

When I was in grade school I wasn't the only one who was bitten by the radio bug.  There were 4 of us that I remember having Hallicrafters short wave sets in 7th and 8th grades.  BTW, Allied had a store not too far from us in the Milwaukee area, I suspect that's where all 4 radios originated.  The Hallicrafters sets were a lot of fun although all were the basic All-American 5 tube AM radio (but made for Hallicrafters in Japan).  These were the heirs to the S-38.  Hallicrafters did theme and variation on the designs, adding doo-dads here and there.  This WR-1500 is a beautiful example (it added long wave coverage): This was the 1968-1969 time frame, a sunspot maximim (I remember seeing the northern lights on vacation to Washington Island).  We could listen to regular broadcast AM (one fellow used to DX AM stations, writing for QSL cards) - there was actually stuff to hear on AM and shortwave then.  I used to love to listen to the overseas shortwave stations and also wrote for QS

 Sometimes something is just fun Like this: source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/aurora-swirl-spacex-alaska-1.6749682 Kind of like the ending of E.T. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

They lit it and it went off.  As might be expected with the millions of pounds involved, the ascent was slow.   I noticed that at one point that not all of the engines were burning.   Then near the end it was doing that weird roll. And finally the explosion RUD Rapid Unscheduled Dissasembly. It looked like the tower worked perfectly at launch.  Hopefully there isn't much damage. It kinda reminded me of when a tree fell on the garage a year or so ago.  We were able to get it off.  The garage wasn't severely damaged.  No one got hurt, I thought it was a success. Same thing with Starship, it launched, nothing on the ground was damaged, no one got hurt - call it a success ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Mentioned the March 29th Vulcan anomaly before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/04/vulcan-anomaly-march-292023.html But recently the head of ULA, Tory Bruno, posted a video: https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1646572389193625600 Noticed that if the video is slowed down, at about 3 seconds the panels on the test stand start to blow out, there's no colored flame yet but then almost immediately the orange fireball, wow. I guess that's part of the reason why I am interested in this stuff, explosions are fascinating.  When they light Starship up (tomorrow ?) I am not wishing any bad luck on Spacex but I'll be watching just in case there's a BOOM ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

The last taps were pulled on April 15th, 2023.  Here are a few notes on this season: 1) 272 liters (68 distilling sessions) (about 72 gallons) were boiled 2) had 6 breaker trips or about 10 percent of the time, that is too many, need to follow up on measuring the water output 3) only processed sap above 2 percent sugar concentration, the refractometer worked OK but it was a hassle to use in the cold - need to look at quicker/easier (electronic?) measurement of sugar concentration 4) the sweetest sap was from trees to the west and north, older, larger trees were better than younger/smaller trees 5) the new taps were better than either the original black ones or the clear ones, easier to pull 6) still need to get busy and finish boiling the syrup and canning 7) decided to skip birch sap this year, too much trouble 8) it is really nice to take a break from the boiling, the distiller fan is quite noisy, have about 2 months of distilled water Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ha

While preparing my taxes (yes, I wait till the last second) I realized that I hadn't gotten an order from Gary, KD9SV in over a year.  I assume that Gary has stopped his business.  He used to sell the Keyall kit built into an enclosure via DX Engineering: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/svp-sv-kr But now DX Engineering only lists three items from KD9SV: https://www.dxengineering.com/search/brand/kd9sv-products It was fun to sometimes get an email from an old ham friend when they open up a built item like the KD9SV Model SV-KR and see my callsign on the circuit board :) source: https://static.dxengineering.com/global/images/prod/xlarge/svp-sv-kr_ix_xl.jpg Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Looking at my projects page: http://wb9kzy.com/projects.htm I found this image of the output of a VFO drift test: source: http://wb9kzy.com/ssspcba3.gif The idea was to use a frequency counter with  Morse Code output to measure the drift of a VFO.  A PC "listened" to the Morse Code and kerchunked the results into a file.  That file was then imported into a spreadsheet and plotted. The interesting part of this test were the spikes.  Looking at the raw data it was easy to see the problem was with the PIC based counter since the spikes were always 256 Hz away from the other spikes.  Using a stable DDS source it was easy to zero in on the frequencies which caused the problem.  This wouldn't normally be noticed by a user but the data and especially the plot made it easy to see. I mentioned this to the kit designer and he fixed the bug. Unfortunately PCs don't have parallel printer ports anymore so one of these days I will have to figure out how to use a USB to PIC interfac

. dum-de-dum-dum I was listening to The Telegraph's Ukraine: The Latest podcast on Friday: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-battle-for-bakhmut-continues-russian-special/id1612424182?i=1000608977711 Gareth Corfield mentioned a few interesting things about the air man at about 21 minutes: 1) He was tracked down by the NY Times (among others) using the backgrounds of the pictures of the documents (items from his parent's house: the tile floor, a marble countertop) and correlating them to his family's social media posts. 2) He *may* have gotten the docs by taking them from a "burn bag" - such docs should be destroyed, not taken home - in other words, dumpster diving ! 3) He was a computer guy for the MA Air Guard. So we may be talking a Barney Fife kind of a guy but WITHOUT an Andy Taylor type of boss.  It's usually the leadership that's at fault. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

I saw this email on the GQRP group: "FWIW, I used to know someone who got into trouble with the PO for illegal transmissions when he was at school. He and a friend bought 19 sets and were chatting to each other across town. Don't know if they were fined but the radios were confiscated." Of course it's primarily English ham radio operators in the group so they know but I was thinking:  "19 sets" ??  That seems like a lot of radios :) Then I did an internet search and found this wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Set_No._19 . Yet another time the internet saved me from asking a foolish question :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

. from a NY Times email What did you expect ?  HE's an AIR MAN ! source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUiIjVHajBg Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

Apparently Willie Wiredhand was the electric co-op version of Reddy Kilowatt (who was reserved for electric power companies ?). Willie Wiredhand  Instead of lightning bolts, Willie had a lamp socket for his head (the on-off switch was his nose) and a 2 wire plug as his legs/feet.  Willie seems a little more safety conscious.  Also, his name ends with hand so like a hired hand, Willie is there to serve your reasonable requests.  Reddy just seems to symbolize danger - but isn't danger even more enticing to kids ?   An internet search will bring up lots of info on Willie and Reddy including a law suit.  Apparently whenever anything was to be explained to kids in the 20th century a cartoon character was required :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was working on packaging a keyer and realized that my favorite, telephone ringer type of piezo wouldn't fit. These piezos use a 44 mm disc and are housed in a plastic case with mounting ears.  They can either be mounted behind a panel or put outside the case.  But I couldn't squeeze them in. Then I decided to try a small dynamic speaker like this: source: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/DB-Unlimited/SM231508-1?qs=t9M3m0YJX4Ng139DBuQXjw%3D%3D It's less than an inch in diameter but sounds fairly good, better than a piezo.  However that decent sound comes with a cost: higher power.  The keyer driving a piezo uses about 0.7 mA but the dynamic speaker uses 12.8 mA.  So a 12 mA difference at 5 volts, that's 64 mW versus 4.5 mW.  So battery life will be shorter. Another thing:  I don't like to hook a low resistance directly to a PIC pin, so a series cap will also be used - it's also a little louder with the series cap (470 uF). People have been suggesting that I

Still having trouble dialing in the maple sap boiling.  Getting too many flip outs of the still breaker, often just a few minutes before the scheduled time. It's due to the changing nature of the room temperature, the sap temperature (usually whatever the fridge temp is), the amount of sap (usually  4 liters) and the sugar concentration. Now that the end of the season is pretty close I may have an idea ?  Just monitor the amount of distilled water output. Unfortunately this is about 1 gallon of water and I don't have any measuring cups bigger than 1 quart.  I normally use an old enameled stock pot to catch the water as it drips out, But I have noticed 1 gallon measuring pitchers like this on Amazon / Ebay: They aren't cheap (in the 20 to 40 dollar range) but is anything these days ?  So I will get one and try it - the idea is to stop the boil arbitrarily at 126 ounces, yielding 8 ounces of almost syrup but before the breaker trips.  Hopefully next year there will be fewer f

It always happens, there will be a day in the spring when reliable old WJMN, formerly channel 3, now over-the-air channel 32 can't be received. WJMN is usually so reliable that I point the TV antenna towards Green Bay rather than at Upper Michigan where the WFRV transmitter is located. When this happens I always rescan the TV set.  Because it means that either there's another RF channel 32 station destructively interfering with WJMN or maybe WJMN signal is skipping over the island ? In any case this time I got 45 channels total, including many from Milwaukee.  The exact reason for this is unknown to me but it may be some kind of signal ducting over the lake. Didn't have to buy a license or go outside to fish ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

 This was an interesting picture: source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/ula-continues-investigation-of-centaur-stage-anomaly/ Hydrogen burns "up and away" - so while the explosion was impressive, if it had been methane, yikes ! As blogged on before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/08/nichelle-nichols.html It will be a while before the remains of Nichelle Nichols get placed into outer space. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Here is a quick demo of a home made speaker:    The funnel end of an old vinegar bottle was used. Some magnet wire was wrapped around the end, covered with tape. A small rectangular magnet was taped inside the coil. It does work but not much volume or fidelity (works OK with CW). The SMT version of the Zerobeat kit was included to provide some "motion".  This was recorded on 20 meters, the morning of April 8, 2023.    Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm                   

I saw this tweet from NASA: which held this remarkable JWST image of Uranus: But being 12 years old inside, I thought of this: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWqRy_a4Das Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

I gotta try this: From Tim Hunkin's 2nd video (Solenoids and Relays) from the 3rd season of The Secret Life of Components: source: https://youtu.be/fdj_g_1tj4c?t=982 It's at about 16 minutes, 22 seconds into the video. A good excuse to buy some potato chips if nothing else :) BTW, the weirdest relay I ever encountered (and still use every day in the heating season) is a Minivector 24 volt electric heat relay.  It would sometimes stick ON (this is bad :) The relay isn't magnetic, instead a bimetallic plate is heated when the thermostat goes ON.  As this plate expands it presses on the actuate buttons of two C&K switches (like microswitches on steroids) to turn on the power to the baseboard heaters.   The only reason for doing it this way that I could see was to take advantage of the built-in hysteresis of the switches.  Like a microswitch, these bigger C&K units have different actuate and release points.  It's very similar to the thermostats in a simple baseboard

Tim Hunkin has produced another set of 4 shows in The Secret Life of Components. Goody! announcement:   1st show: pneumatics: I'll be interested to see the show on solenoids and relays: BTW, watch out for the Frisk-o-matic ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

. This is an interesting video: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh88Y2_33GI The most interesting quote (at about 2 min 40 sec):      "The FLR-9 is made primarily out of wood and out of copper, which you would never guess" I remember being told in the 20th century that NSA stood for Never Say Anything, but maybe that has changed :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Part of the problem with the demise of stores or catalogs is that if you don't know what something is called it can be hard to find.   example: those clothespins with a hook on the end for a shower curtain rod or towel rack If you search clothespins on ebay there are over 5000 results in multiple categories.  Ebay doesn't have it but one thing I use more and more on both Bing and Google is the picture search, just by clicking the little camera icon on the search box allows a wordless search: So now I've got some extra terms like laundry hooks and drip dry, plugging them into ebay I find this: But $22 for something marked 23 cents ?  I don't think so.  BTW, the problem with these hanger clothespins is that they break quite easily. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was listening to the Soldersmoke podcast: http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke245.mp3 At one point Bill, N2CQR expresses a suspicion that some of the high school kids involved in a direct conversion build project are losing interest. When I attended Nicolet High School 1969-1973 there was a ham radio club.  A nice one with a radio shack, antennas, rigs, surplus stuff to fool around with.  The club went out on Field Day each summer: http://wb9kzy.com/ggg.htm  I didn't join the club until junior year.  I don't think there were any licensed hams in the club when I joined.  The president of the club was a lapsed Novice (Novices had one year to upgrade or oblivion).  I don't know if he ever got his license again.  I finally got my license during senior year,fall 1972 and did get on the club station before I finally got the HW-16 going at home. Our big radio club project was supposed to be a fund raiser, selling a noise maker thingy that we were going to call: The Super Whoopee.

As I've mentioned before, the Andy Griffith Show was my favorite (of course the black and white episodes): https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/01/cindy-williams-cbs-black-and-white.html But watching them now sometimes brings up questions like:  were those Eico radios behind Barney ever actually used ?   For one thing, Andy and Barney were almost always together.  Who would they talk to ? :) It's kind of like in Star Trek, The Next Generation.  They had the ability to separate the Enterprise into two sections, the saucer and the engineering section but was that ever done after the first episode ? Episodic television doesn't withstand the micro scrutiny of fandom :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm