A Crummy Commercial

I have been using the Midland FRS handie talkie radios to monitor for hunting activity.  It turns out that some hunters still use them but mostly the radio just scans.  As a result the Nimh batteries do run down so I thought I'd try charging them in place using the Midland charger: However when I took the radio out  of the charger and turned it on the display was all weird, like it was on channel 27 and there are only 14 channels on these sets - heck !  How can a battery charger do that to a radio ? So then I tried taking the batteries out and re-installing them - no help.  Then I took them out again and pressed all the buttons and turned on the audio (to discharge any internal caps) - no help.  Finally I put the batteries back in and then pressed and held the F (function) orange button while powering up - this worked !  It must act as a reset or ?? Anyway, that's it for the Talkie Killer, even though it is less convenient I will charge the batteries e...

The Packers beat the Dolphins on Thanksgiving day 30 to 17.  The Pack dominated the first half and then kinda coasted the second half to the win. But there was one area where the Dolphins have us beat:  funny names.   Particularly Storm Duck and River Cracraft. Storm Duck River Cracraft   I feel there is some water related story involving these fellows somehow but these are their actual names. I guess it reminds me of Vic and Sade (or to a lesser extent, Fred Allen or even Dickens).  For example: Rush's school principal was named Mr. Chinbunny.  The garbage man was named Mr. Gumpox (he drove a horse drawn wagon pulled by his horse Howard, Howard had a sister named Bernice but she died).  The least favored members of the All-star marching team in Vic's opinion were two men, twins from Hoopston IL named Robert and Slobert Hink.  The local restaurant favored by the big boss of Vic's plant was called: The Little Tiny Petite Pheasant Feather Tea S...

As has happened before, fell asleep during this NOVA broadcast, Building Stuff, Change It : source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvkXxB9_JMw Luckily it was on Youtube today so I was able to finish watching it.  Stories about engineering projects should be holding my interest but nope !  :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I saw this on the wonderful Worldradiohistory site: source: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Modern-Era-Miscellaneous/World-Radio-Laboratories-1956-Catalog-16.pdf I never knew that WRL was a full line distributor, this catalog looks like one from Allied or Lafayette.  But of course as a ham I was attracted to the bargain pages at the back, for example the surplus command sets: and the surplus J-38 key: Here is the semi-obligatory inflated price for that key: Yeah, I'd buy a J-38 at that inflated price ! Which begs the question:  why don't the 21st century electronics distributors have anything "fun" to sell OR why not bargains ?  I guess they have learned the lessons of Fry's or Radio Shack too well. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I heard a helicopter fly over the island this morning, per Flightaware.com it was C6047, a Coast Guard helicopter. I tried listening to the Door County fire and rescue channel on Broadcastify but heard nothing. It looks like they flew up from Sturgeon Bay and then looked around St. Martin island for a while and then flew back to Sturgeon Bay. it took me a while to get out of the chair, put on my coat, get the camera and then get outside Was this a training flight or a possible rescue/assistance flight ?  I'll have to see if the Coast Guard publishes some kind of incident report - my limited understanding of the military is that NOTHING escapes a report to the higher ups. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I got out the FRS talkies thinking that maybe they are still used by hunters ?  Nope, haven't heard anything so far.  But one thing I did notice was the antenna, the rubber on the spiral antenna has cracked and gotten brittle.   Unfortunately there's no easy way to replace these - everybody hates Baofeng talkies but the antennas are easy to replace. And this was the intent of the FCC and Radio Shack, the FCC didn't want people to be able to use an FRS at home, possibly with higher potential for interference (especially with an external amplifier) - Radio Shack probably just wanted to have have another radio type to be able to sell. The only FRS that I recall with seperate antenna, the Radio Shack 21-1850: As I understand it the radio RF guts are in the antenna base, it connects to the power supply connector - the microphone also has the speaker/display and controls (the audio and control guts).  It was meant for mobile usage but I suspect some people stuck the antenn...

I'm not much for deer hunting season.  9 or 10 days of worrying at least a tiny bit that you might get shot, no thanks.  There is also bow season but not sure how popular that is around here.   This afternoon a neighbor came over and asked if they could hunt in the woods I have, I said no.  I didn't mention that time last February when the neighbors set off an explosion next door so loud it knocked a couple of pictures off the wall in my living room !  I also didn't mention the time a few seasons ago when someone next door was botching the killing of some kind of animal - the animal was screaming, the people were dropping f-bombs, and this is like 11pm - do you suppose alcohol was involved ?  Anyway, today he said OK and thanks and left. Then a little later he knocks again while I am baking my pizza and listening to the Packer game.  He says other hunters are trespassing and shooting on my property, it wasn't him.  I walked out there and didn't se...

21st century sports has quant fever ! (I blame sports gambling)  So what about the sports analysts ?  Shouldn't their statistics be examined ? I was listening to the Pack-a-day podcast with Andy Herman and was wondering:  How fast does Andy talk ?  He does have a lot to say and what he says is interesting.  But he does talk fast, for example consider the names: Ballentine and Valentine - both corners for the Packers so same job, very similar names, hard to distinguish at times when delivered at a high speed.  Luckily Andy does use first names (he said Carrington Valentine something like 20 times per Youtube) - I didn't hear him say Ballentine at all (or his first name: Corey) so I must have missed something ?  Now some analysts like LeRoy Butler often use jersey numbers when referring to players - not sure if that increases or decreases the number the syllables :) source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLKS7_OlTyY Today the podcast was 32.5 minutes lo...

I was looking for some pictures when I found this pamphlet: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/i1ozaxaqsmymcvf4whhgl/gg2.pdf?rlkey=6bjkl33vpk62fw8mgrn49oal3&st=cm4er86t&dl=0 Here is the semi-obligatory inflated pricing for the pamphlet: I'm not sure where this pamphlet came from.  It was found with letters from when we lived in Nashville.  There was a Golden Guernsey Dairy in the Milwaukee area but I don't remember ever going there.  Apparently Golden Guernsey ended abruptly in Wisconsin: https://patch.com/wisconsin/waukesha/is-golden-guernsey-dairy-closed-for-good It's stunning to think of all the people who must have worked on this pamphlet, the artist, the photographer, the graphics people, the printer, ad agency copywriters and probably the Golden Guernsey staff supervising - and there were squillions of little projects like this.  And the time it must have taken without computers, amazing. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Mentioned previously: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-peltz-oscillator-circuit.html I tried changing the keying so that a normal key closure to ground could be used, the PNP transistors (I used two 2n4403 PNP transistors but the 2n3906 or others should work as well) and the positive supply voltage help.  A 10 k ohm pot was added (R4) and adjusted until oscillation stops (about 3.8 k ohms). The oscillation cutoff happened at a supply current of about .435 mA.  Then when the key is closed the supply current increases slightly to .45 mA and oscillation begins.  I first saw this keying technique mentioned in a Hint and Kink by Denton Bramwell, K7OWJ: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/02/wien-bridge-audio-oscillator-keying_27.html The result is a little thumpy, more shaping is probably required which would complicate things.  But the stumbling block is really that inductor, high value audio inductors aren't as easy to come by anymore.  Here I used the primary ...

I thought this was a really interesting video: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTDFhWWPZ4Q Rarely do any programs on Amelia Earhart's last flight get into any of the technical details like this one does.  They usually just say that she wasn't a good radio operator and that navigator Fred Noonan was a drunk.  And I didn't realize about the increased engine noise, even with headphones it would be hard to hear a null with the equivalent of a zillion leaf blowers bolted to the air frame. About the only RDF receiver I have is the Heathkit MR-1010 which I've mentioned before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-heathkit-mr-1010.html Older Heathkit RDF receivers had one feature the MR-1010 doesn't have, they also covered into HF - but after seeing this video I can see how that wouldn't necessarily be useful for direction finding.  So Heath must have decided to leave out any coverage above the AM broadcast band. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/...

I excavated an old all-in-one, a Lexmark X3350: But wasn't able to try it, none of the old machines seem to have drivers installed.  So I searched on Lexmark X3350 and found this page: https://support.lexmark.com/en_nz/drivers-downloads.html?q=Lexmark%20X3350 But the weird thing is none of the 22 languages for the drivers were English !   Lexmark is an outgrowth of IBM but International must also include England (and Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand - you get the idea).  Lexmark used to be in Kentucky, not sure where they are now. So I just used the Spanish Vista 64 driver and sorta figured the install out, but weird, man, weird ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Two Words:  Kuba Komet source: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52376107250_164269f638_b.jpg more info: https://www.earlytelevision.org/kuba.html a video of a Kuba Komet which will be restored:   source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldI8MmaQybM The semi-obligatory inflated price: As the web site above and the video above state the pointy part (the sail) swivels on a turntable and has many speakers. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was combing through the various junkboxes and came upon this: battery is 2.93 volts It's a watch from Texas Instruments but it is meant as a development platform for their MSP430 microcontroller and wireless applications - it's from over 10 years ago now.  I never really used it as either a watch or to develop microcontroller designs - it's just been sitting around. One nice thing, those lithium coin cells don't leak even though they are completely discharged.  That Sony coin cell was in the watch. I didn't have any fresh CR2032 cells so I put in one taken out of my digital scale.  One kind of neat thing about the TI Watch is that it can measure and display the battery voltage which is 2.93 volts.  So it's pretty close to dead but not quite yet. I was thinking about using the watch while walking - it also has some kind of way to sense motion so it might be sorta like a primitive Fitbit.  But I wasn't able to even set the time - I don't know if it...

I tried this Peltz oscillator circuit: source: https://wiki.analog.com/university/courses/electronics/comms-lab-peltz-osc I made a couple of changes, used generic PNP transistors rather than NPN so a positive 5 volt supply could be used (suggested on the EDN site in the comments for a Design Idea).  Also added a series resistor to the 10k ohm in the emitter leads with a higher value (240 k ohms) so that the oscillation would cease.  Then this 240k ohm resistor could be shorted out with a key (for keying).  I also used larger L1 and C1 values to shift down into the audio range.  The inductor is a winding of a small audio transformer. It works but nothing spectacular, the distortion is visible but it sounds OK and the parts count is low.  Just a quick tryout on a solderless breadboard. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I've heard from another islander that there have been a lot of mice on the island this year.  And they might be just as bad or worse on Rock Island (the state park).  Unfortunately I can confirm this increase of the mouse population - I've trapped well over a dozen mice this fall. This reminded me of the 1983 movie: Never Cry Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Cry_Wolf_(film) Charles Martin Smith portrays a wildlife biologist studying the wolves in the Arctic and their prey.  Without spoiling the movie let's just say that there are a LOT of mice in the movie. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm