A Crummy Commercial

Patrolling the Ether  was mentioned last Sunday: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/05/miscellaneous-sunday.html  source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaB_w-j6bvg  I looked at it again and noticed a couple of brief clips.  First, the inker:   I *wish* that the 567 tone decoder circuits I've tried gave such clean results !  It's pretty easy to copy 056 by sight ! Second, the disc recorder: A pretty serious looking machine with the straight cutting arm and gear drive although the medium looks pretty chintzy, maybe paper coated with wax ?  The original floppy disc ! Sears sold recorders pre-war but not quite as professional: Sears also sold the blank discs: Semi-obligatory inflated price: WOW !  an 88x price means the cheapest single blank 12 cent record would be the equivalent of $10.56 today !  No wonder the FCC was using those cheap "floppy" records ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

I got an email this morning mentioning SiC (Silicon Carbide) JFETs from onsemi.  These SiC JFETs are a family of parts among the WBG (Wide Band Gap) semiconductors.  There are now tales of super USB chargers that are really fast and small - chances are they use some kind of WBG semiconductor to handle the high voltage / high current of stepping down rectified AC line voltage to 5 volts DC with high efficiency. At first I thought these were something new from onsemi but as this DigiKey listing shows: onsemi has bought the JFET portfolio from another company (United SiC ?) but still, it's something new to me. Here are the onsemi (formerly Motorola) offerings: https://www.onsemi.com/products/discrete-power-modules/silicon-carbide-sic/silicon-carbide-sic-jfets  An Intro to SiC JFETs: https://www.onsemi.com/download/user-s-manual/pdf/um70113-d.pdf  app notes for SiC JFETs: https://www.onsemi.com/design/technical-documentation#ZHQ9QXBwbGljYXRpb24gTm90ZXM7cHQ9MTAzMTcyOw==...

I thought I had a quick little project to improve things, nope !  I've mentioned failure with the Westclox before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/05/boss-again.html  https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/05/boss.html  I decided to try to get around the limited life of a Nimh cell (limited by the cell voltage compared to primary cells) by using a regulator, I tried it with a Seiko (now ABLIC) S812C15 1.5 volt regulator using two AAA Nimh cells: But it doesn't work, the clock doesn't do anything when connected to the regulator output.  This is probably due to the limited capacitor size (2.2 uF tantalum) on the output and also the limited current capability of the Seiko (50 mA as I recall).  The Seiko regulators have the lowest quiescent current of any on the market that I am aware of - but that apparently comes at the price of output current in this case.  I could have used a different regulator chip but then battery life would be bad - and that was the whole re...

I am always the last to know - I had never heard of this rule for Major League Baseball: This is so weird - it reminds me of when I saw a tie college football game on TV once, instead of kicking off during overtime they kept putting the ball on the 25 yard line of the opponent - the game went on forever :) Anyway, the Brewers served highlights this morning, beating the Red Sox 5-1 with a walkoff grand slam by Yelich, good game. update 2025-05-29: another extra innings win with highlights ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

https://spectrum.ieee.org/will-tariffs-hurt-makersphere Of course hams are fellow travelers in that makersphere along with musicians, robot builders and students.   Adafruit paid over $36,000 on goods that sold for less than $80,000 !  Makes me want to buy some Adafruit modules while they are still cheap !  For example the ever popular SI5351 at Digikey: used in many a digital VFO source: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/2045/5353666 Oh yeah, I was gonna check Mouser, too but got this: Sorry Mouser, hate my VPN, hate me !  NO SALE ! :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I finally repaired a bicycle flat tire today - one item I've used recently works well:  Park Tool Tire Patches.  They weren't super cheap at $1 each but the cool thing is that there is no little metal tube of glue - you know those tubes of stuff, as soon as the metal is punctured the clock is ticking and by the time you need a second patch, the contents of the tube have evaporated.  Also those old glue patches are iffy, sometimes they work, sometimes not.  The Park patches are easy, just sand the hole area with the included sandpaper, dust it off and then peel the backing and stick on the patch. Done. The only bad thing is that the patches are in a little plastic box that is easily lost - I KNOW there's another one around here somewhere ! I've got to see if Park also makes bicycle tubes :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

A Go Fund Me for a store ? American Science and Surplus has been blogged on before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/01/for-some-reason-i-knew-it-as-jerryco.html I saw in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the store now has a Go Fund Me: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2025/05/24/american-science-surplus-launches-gofundme-to-keep-the-store-alive/83844145007/ Here is the store's blog post: https://sciplus.com/blog/a-message-from-american-science-surplus-/ Where else would you see a Full Size Terra Cotta Warrior ($1200) https://sciplus.com/lifesize-terra-cotta-warrior/  AND a Baofeng HT (sold out at $21.95) from the same store ? https://sciplus.com/portable-handheld-multi-band-radio/ Cemeteries On The Air ? This is a fun video, a 16 year old ham is contacted by the FCC, 4 years later he is toting a pistol and hunting down Nazi spies with radio ! source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaB_w-j6bvg People activate Parks On The Air, Islands On The Air - are Cemeteries next ?  ...

I saw this on Informed Delivery this AM: My first thought was:  Ham Radio Antiques Roadshow ? This must have cost a pretty penny if they mailed it to every ham hundreds of miles away from either Milwaukee or Minneapolis (like I am). Unlike Schulman (mentioned before): https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/03/schulman-auctions.html Ham & HiFi sells mostly on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/str/hamandhifi I dunno, $280 for a broken SB-104 seems pricey to me: Update 2025-05-27: The flyer wasn't delivered until Tuesday, folded, here is the other side: Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Continuing the quest: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/05/quest-for-maple-dale-era-photos-scans.html I remembered this from Peanuts: source: https://archive.org/details/peanutstreasury0000char/page/n137/mode/2up And I thought:  maybe I put grade school pictures in a book to press out ? I started with the Columbia Encyclopedia which is a huge book with fine print but wasn't much good for grade school reports.  No pictures, leaves or paper money was found. I'll keep looking, lots of books here, WHAP ! :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

This will be the third (probably last) mention of the new Morse Dial Timer kit: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/05/a-new-kit-for-2025.html I have sorta mentioned it before in blog posts, here I was having trouble with a low piezo volume on the prototype Morse Dial Timer kit: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/05/12-volts-not-required.html Here I mentioned a weird problem with switch mounting for the prototype of the Morse Dial Timer kit: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/05/a-simple-kit-fix.html Here was a change I made to the prototype Morse Dial Timer kit to make the tick sound sorta similar to the WWV or WWVH on-the-second tick: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-tick.html The Piezo Loudenator kit was incorporated on-board the Morse Dial Timer kit, a quiet timer is of little use: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-4007-or-what-about-that-piezo.html I think I'll give the blog a rest on the Morse Dial Timer kit for now :) http://wb9kzy.com/mordial.htm Best Regards, Chuck, ...

The new Morse Dial Timer mentioned yesterday: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/05/a-new-kit-for-2025.html was inspired by a couple of products I've noticed over the years.  First was the PRC-74 solid state transceiver used in Vietnam: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/09/just-dream-prc-74-transceiver.html and the RF-301 transceiver: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/01/radio-with-thousands-of-channels.html The main idea was setting the frequency with rotary switches, they serve both as a "dial" and as a "display", neat, just pivot the idea to a timer ! And of course the second, more direct inspiration was the Heathkit PT-15 photo timer: source: https://www.ebay.com/itm/334835327435   It's an RC hardware timer with a OA2 tube (!) to regulate the line voltage.  But the delay is set in 2 decades, there is also an x10 slide switch, start momentary switch and a stop slide switch. The Heathkit catalog listing for the PT-15 in 1977: The semi-obligatory inflated price...

Announcing the Morse Dial Timer kit.  Please see: http://wb9kzy.com/mordial.htm Everything I could think of, hardware wise, is included except solder, wire and a battery. It's the kit that I use the most, just as a regular timer around the house.  For the kitchen, for exercising and recently for timing Microsoft Bing which makes me wait 30 minutes to accumulate points.  Any changes to timer duration are an easy twist of the dials.  And once it is set, the duration stays the same, no need to punch in the same delay over and over. The kit has some rough edges but it's usable as is.  I really like it and hope kit builders will, too.   Update June 6, 2025:  I put a short video on Youtube by Richard Parks, K9LW, of the Morse Dial Timer driving a telegraph sounder (with a Keyall in-between):   source:  https://youtube.com/shorts/mRhXfInpoIo  Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0pLtL-DjIQ  I finally realized something, The Milwaukee Brewers only pop up highlights on my Youtube page if they win :) So when they are on a losing streak I have to search on "Brewers highlights" or it's "no highlights for you !" :) Next day update (2025-05-20): it happened again: Brewers beat Orioles, 5-4   And the third day (2025-05-21) confirms the pattern: Brewers 5, Orioles 2  The mound thingy was unexpected: My Dad used to work at Johnson Controls.   another update 2025-05-22: The Brewers lost: Youtube / The Brewers didn't serve any highlights.  Whoops, I blogged too soon, the Orioles and Youtube served it: 35 year old rookie, HA ! The Orioles broke it open in the 11th, bummer !  2025-05-23 update:  continuing the pattern the Brewers / Youtube served me highlights after the 8-5 win over the Pirates:   2025-05-24:  no highlights, the Brewers lose to the Pirates 6-5 in extra innings.   202...