A Crummy Commercial

I saw this box (actually 1/2 of a box) on Ebay but was intrigued: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/356752319266 I had no idea that GE had a series of educational projects for kids like this - That led me to a search which found this manual on an interesting site in Spanish: https://www.ccapitalia.net/descarga/docs/1961-general-electric-EF-140.pdf The GE analog computer project in turn reminded me of this: The American Basic Science Club Analog Computer - I got one as a kid - not sure what happened to it.  I *think* I still have the ear phone but not the cardboard box.  I recall seeing it in Boys' Life or one of the other magazines in an ad like this:   I must have seen this ad (in a Sears catalog ?): because I was expecting a meter but I got the one shown in the Boys' Life ad with the ear phone :(  Here is the inflated price: Here is a site by the son of the man behind the American Basic Science Club: https://www.americanbasicscienceclub.com/ Lots of docs up th...

I've mentioned the Lionel Communications Lab 3270 before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/12/lionel-communications-lab-mark-i.html  I saw this 3270 on Ebay in an unopened box: https://www.ebay.com/itm/167780230691  The semi-obligatory deflated price: In other words, it's actually cheaper than it was new ! They also had the Lionel Communications Lab 3272: https://www.ebay.com/itm/167780324136  This one is definitely the buy of the two based on value, (assuming that $39.95 marked on the box is accurate): Inflated price for the 3272: The cheapest person on earth defers on them both: "it could be a pig-in-a-poke" (or in this case, a sealed cardboard box.  And of course I'd open it, fiddle with it for 15 minutes and then set it aside :( Update:  I had watched both Ebay listings above, sure enough, in the early evening I got offers on both of 5% off, get thee behind me, Satan !  :)    Update 2025-9-10: Temptation is OVER:    Best Regards, Ch...

I was watching this video from DigiKey: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmDfVxSnFg  And then I looked at the page on DigiKey for the magnetic connectors: project page: https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/projects/designing-interactive-led-game-tiles-from-scratch/237a699db3be477ea00c898b55a27eea  connector page: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/5359/15965217  Yikes !  $6.95 per pair (plus tariff tax !)  and only 15 in stock !  One of those hexatiles would be over $21 just for the connectors !  Of course something similar was used in a Mac, cool yet expensive. But it immediately brought the Raytheon Lectron to mind: source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Lectron  This was a set of magnetic modules that a kid could use to create circuits.  The modules had a magnet on the bottom which would be attracted to a steel base plate.  The connections are also magnetized but only one contact on a side s...

  source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K41knr45xEA This was an interesting video both because this fellow was a demon for keeping and collecting stuff from childhood, being organized as a kid and for the negative vibe that the video transmits which he apparently got from his parents, classmates and grownups.  Wow, I guess I was spoiled because I never got this kind of discouraging feedback that I can recall.  The video is kind of a downer but interesting - lesson learned: don't treat kids negatively, they may grow up to be content creators and regale future generations with tales of your negativity !  :) Here is an ad for the second transistor radio I ever owned: note that the scale and the ironing board were less than half the price of the radio ! Ad was from the December 5, 1965 Milwaukee Journal, here is the semi-obligatory inflated price: A 10x increase in price !  I was never able to find the ad for the radio I bought, it was less than $5.99 so it might ...

While continuing to mess with the varactor crystal set a thought occurred:  one way to see if the distortion problem is real would be to use an AM transmitter with a sine wave input.  Regular AM voice/music is just too jangly to see distortion in the time domain.  So I thought about building an AM transmitter.  I do have some FM band transmitters but nothing for AM.  Then I remembered the IG-102 sitting there, bagged up - it can (sorta) function as an AM transmitter with either internal modulation or external audio from a function generator (or for that matter, a microphone or audio player).   And the IG-102 does work - the internal modulation is NOT a clean sine wave but it does work OK for this test.  Here is that IG-102 modulation audio: not super low distortion but usable Here is the modulated carrier in the time domain: looking at this again: overdriven ?   Here is the demodulated signal from the varactor crystal set: Probably need to re-do t...

Notebooks have been mentioned before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/01/power-supplies.html https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/03/notebook-index-file.html But I thought that this video was really cool: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLbvYv1WiZ0 It reminds me of two things:  the videos of catalogs on Youtube where they browse through page by page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k14oj-4mExY   And the Engineer's Notebooks from Radio Shack by Mims: https://archive.org/details/Forrest_Mims-Engineers_Mini-Notebook_-_Communications_Projects_Radio_Shack_Elec But the fun thing in the video is his inclusion of the shortwave soundtrack, brings me back to those old Hallicrafters S-120 days of my youth ! I've got to see if I can find graph paper type notebooks, I usually just use the lined composition marble notebooks but the cool kids all seem to use the graph paper style. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

 Lionel Communications Lab I've mentioned this before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/12/lionel-communications-lab-mark-i.html Today I found an interesting site with lotsa pictures and even a complete manual (although not the one I wanted): photos: https://cornucopiaoftoytrains.com/science-science-engineering-lab-sets-a/#SE3270 manuals: https://cornucopiaoftoytrains.com/electronics-labs-instruction-manuals/ The Mark IV lab was the most expensive and included a build it yourself tape recorder, amazing.  But the price !    here it is inflated: I wonder how many of them actually sold.  Anyway, a really nice site. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Looking at the midnightscience.com site and got this: So yet another radio / parts site is gone.  As far as I know the force behind the xtal set society was W0XI who died in 2023: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/07/phil-anderson-w0xi-sk.html Phil was also the man behind the Alden Mcduffie kits which apparently got folded into midnightscience.com. Per the wayback machine the last capture was January 3, 2024.  That front page capture indicated that the last update was 2015-10-31 so maybe things had slowed down recently.  Still it would be nice to have the site still up since generally the wayback captures are often found lacking when drilling down into the content. One brighter note: Kantronics, which was started by W0XI, is still a going concern: https://kantronics.com/ Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I saw that Phil Anderson, the person behind Kantronics and also the Crystal Set Society has died: https://www2.ljworld.com/life-events/obituaries/2023/jul/02/philip-anderson/ https://www.midnightscience.com/ Somewhere I have a cartridge for my Atari 400/800 from Kantronics which I think I bought from Spectronics in Oak Park, IL in the 1980s.  As I recall it wasn't an actual cartridge, it was a circuit board - but it fit into the cartridge socket no problem. Here is a site with the manual: http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-hamsoft_33421.html I will have to see if I can find that cartridge - of course then I'll have to find one of the Ataris and a monitor and also come up with some interface hardware - maybe I'll just forget the whole thing :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

 Recently the wonderful World Radio History site put up a scan of a radio/parts catalog from 1915: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Early-Radio-Assorted/Adams-Morgan-New-Jersey-1915.pdf   The Morgan of Adams-Morgan is well known to any kid of the 1960s who was interested in radio and electronics as Alfred P. Morgan, an author of a series of nicely illustrated books for kids.  My favorite book of Mr. Morgan's was his: "Adventures in Electrochemistry" - for a while there I was a nickel plating maniac :) Here is my web page with more stuff about Mr. Morgan:  http://wb9kzy.com/apm.htm    Scroll down this World Radio History page for scans of his kids books: https://worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/Bookshelf_Hobbyist.htm   Finally one of my other favorite Morgan books was this: https://worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/A.P.Morgan/The-Boys-Third-Book-of-Radio-and-Electronics-Morgan.pdf   Here is the pictorial from the book of a crystal set...