A Crummy Commercial

It's a tickler coil type of audio oscillator circuit, mentioned previously: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/02/knight-transistor-code-practice.html Here again is the schematic: note the colors of the transformer leads I haven't gotten it to work yet - I did scare up a 1k:8 audio transformer but I'm not sure if that is what is called for here.  I did find this nice transformer lead color diagram: the red and blue wires on the primary might need to be swapped ? source: https://tubesound.com/rtma-color-codes/#audio One reason why my try didn't work might be that the leads might need to be swapped, either red and blue  OR  green and black.  It seems to me that I did try that because that's a common reason why these kinds of circuits don't work. Also, I haven't found a germanium transistor that is comparable to the CK722 in my junkbox. I will also have to try and find my Allied databook, it might have more transformer info. I'll keep plugging ! Best Regards,...

Not in a person or an institution but a DVM.  My Metex ME-11 DVM, bought from Radio Shack mail order in the 20th century.  I bought it because it had an RS-232 port.  I think I might have used that feature once and then never again :) Metex shown here measuring for a diode on a PIC pin It's kind of like Star Trek The Next Generation: in the first episode the Enterprise gets split into the saucer section and the engineering section - can't even remember why - but I don't think it was ever done again - maybe they did it more, I wasn't that faithful a viewer or rememberer ! Back to the DVM: today I was testing some BAT85 diodes for forward voltage from two different batches.  The first batch produced measurements in the 600 mV range - which seemed wrong.  So I tried the second batch and got readings in the 340-370 mV range - these seemed more reasonable since the BAT85 is a Schottky diode.  So I fumed a little, I had bought the diodes a while back on Ebay and ...

Instead of doing something productive I pawed through some stuff and found a couple of items, the first is a pocket watch: Oooh !  microinches of gold !  It sure is shiny.  Actually it keeps pretty decent time although most watches these days do keep decent time. The second item is a box, an empty box: But a "nice" box.  The lid flap has a magnet which allows the box to close nicely.  I keep the box because I lost the camera it contained shortly after it arrived.  The idea was to tape the camera to a kite and then use it to take aerial movies (this is before the popularity of drones).  So I taped the camera to my Snoopy kite (a good flyer) and tried it out.  Unfortunately the camera fell off the kite while I was flying it - this was in an uncut field in back of the house.  I thought I saw where the camera landed but I must have taken my eyes off it because I couldn't find it.  I looked and looked.  I searched in a grid pattern, no h...

I saw the above at the end of Curious Marc's latest video: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPIZwqq_W_k I tried Google translate on a zoom in and got this: Japanese so maybe it was a bad translation: dumb instead of dump ? I remember one of those yellow signs I saw in a hamshack once, something like:  TEST IN PROGRESS  keep your cotton picking hands off the equipment !  something like this: source: https://storage.googleapis.com/hippostcard/p/234ef24dcee3a13b45e41acafac45cdf.jpg another example: source: https://d3h6k4kfl8m9p0.cloudfront.net/stories/L-Uysv.jgSeFdscFRE70BA.jpeg tech humor: simple and turn down the volume on the laughter. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm     

I found this thick little reference spiral bound booklet among some paperbacks: From the olden days of the 20th century: But paper clipped in the back were these pages: I have no idea why I clipped them out of the binding and then paper clipped them back in :)  (also, don't remember much about the Sentry even after spending 15 years fooling with them - BTW, the Integrator was an HP1000 mini-computer networked to the Sentry testers). Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Time for Paczki ! 2023 mention:  https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/02/fat-tuesday-2023.html They are up a dollar from the 2023 price to $5.99 - but what the heck, it's only once a year ! The weather today was windy but over 40F so not too bad - Fat Tuesday is late this year. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Although my favorite radio series is Vic and Sade, the CBS Radio Workshop episode: Subways are for Sleeping is my single favorite old time radio show episode: https://www.archive.org/download/CBSRadioWorkshop/CBSrw_56-08-03_ep28-Subways_Are_for_Sleeping.mp3 It's the true story of a homeless man in New York, Henry Shelby after World War II.  This show was adapted from the Edmund G. Love article in the March 1956 issue of Harper's Magazine: https://harpers.org/archive/1956/03/subways-are-for-sleeping/ There was also a book by Edmund G. Love which contained the Henry Shelby story but also had other stories of homeless folks in New York City.  It also reveals what happened to Henry Shelby. There's a wiki for the Broadway musical version of Subways are for Sleeping : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subways_Are_for_Sleeping The cast was impressive (Orson Bean and Phyllis Newman) and the production team was first rate: music was by Jule Styne and the writing team of Betty Comden a...

Found my old CPO: oooh !  gold !  microinches thick !  :) Someone should have taken better care of it !  It still works although it never worked that great.  The tone is grating and maybe a little too loud.  It uses about 7 mA key up and 16 mA key down.  With the slide switch in the light position no current is used key up - so that functions to save the C-cell from discharging. I'll never sell it or throw it out though - putting it together was one of those Father-Son projects. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm