A Crummy Commercial

I have blogged on this idea before in passing but it's worth repeating: when building an electronic project be sure to use a Sharpie on either the inside of the case (or on the circuit board) to record the date. Then, enter that date and as many notes as you can think of about the project into a lab notebook ! If you are like me your memory was never that good, but even if you HAD a good memory, it will probably get worse as time goes by.  With the written date it will be easy to refresh your memory on the project.  And in that notebook, remember 5 Ws and an H: An excerpt from the Kipling poem: Keep Six Honest Serving Men I keep six honest serving-men    (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When     And How and Where and Who. source:  https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_serving.htm In other words, consider yourself a reporter trying to explain the project to someone who is unaware of this project (probably YOU in t...

"why'd you have to say that, impossible,  why'd you have to say that ?" source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC4efdAv1LM BTW, per Heinlein, strap on wings might allow humans to fly: on the Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menace_from_Earth https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/SF/FSF/FSF_1957_08.pdf (note that The Menace from Earth is followed by a 1 pager from Asimov: A Loint of Paw :) Other than being fun, why mention this ? Because I've always found it much easier to do a task if I know that it has been done before.  The real pioneers will either fail or they'll spend a lot of time/money on a problem.  It was so much easier to write a keyer program for an 8 pin PIC microcontroller after seeing that the fellows at Embedded Research had already created the Tick keyers.  (I did add my old favorite, the potentiometer based speed control).  After Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth it was easier for NASA to send John Glenn around 3 times.  S...

https://www.pcmag.com/news/is-your-website-down-outage-hits-hosting-provider-namecheap Unfortunately, my email and website are hosted by Namecheap.  So I happened to try email and got this: Then I tried the WB9KZY.COM site and got this: Thinking maybe it was a browser thing I tried Edge instead of Firefox and got this: Namecheap did have some explanations up: Hopefully this isn't a huge problem for my business but customers have enough reasons to buy from other vendors, don't need this in addition ! Update: sometime between 6:00 PM and 6:47 PM on Thursday, August 13, 2026 both email and the web site are back. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

I saw an email on the Piclist that Microchip Technology (the PIC people) have made the full XC compilers including the optimization stuff (whatever that is) free for the downloading.  It used to be that the unoptimizing compiler was available as a part of MPLAB.  Here is the press release: https://ir.microchip.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1403/microchip-expands-developer-access-with-free-mplab-xc-compilers-and-mplab-machine-learning-development-suite I've made many attempts to learn programming beyond PIC assembly language but never made much progress.  Theoretically it should increase productivity but I dunno - I'm just not that great at programming.  It sounds like a lot of folks are becoming, in effect: "systems analysts". they don't write code, they spec what they want the code to do.  Then the AI generates the code.  The person then reviews, tests and tweaks the input to AI for any necessary changes.  I can't see doing that either, especi...

Continued from yesterday: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/06/morsemaster-ii-shaped-code.html   I did try the MorseMaster II sidetone on the solderless breadboard.  It actually works pretty well.  Here is an short pulse from the LM380 output with the RC filtering: It seems to me that I tried this circuit before but found it thumpy.  This time the thumping is minimal.  The two high pass RC pairs may account for this - I may have not used the spec'd parts before.  The only problem, noticed with headphones, is backwave.  There is a low level audio signal coming from the 555 chip which is running all the time - think of it as an on frequency QRP audio station which is key down all the time ! The backwave can be reduced by adding a series resistor to the headphones, I tried 180 ohms but more experimentation might help. Update, 2026-6-18:  I tried a 1000 ohm resistor in place of the 180 ohm, really seems to knock down the backwave, of course the  v...

Sometimes I'll get an inquiry on a kit: can you build it for me ? I've almost always answered: NO Why not ?  several reasons: I end up making choices on the enclosure and other parts that the buyer may not like. I am getting older, it's getting harder to build even through hole kits now - I just can't see as well. magnifiers help but being able to see well without optical help is really handy for building kits Building also takes time, even at $15 per hour that mounts up. As a kit seller I would be skirting the FCC regulations by selling something built which may or may not pass EMI requirements.  But a home kit builder doesn't have to worry about this.     Note that this isn't really true of unclocked kits, like the Keyall series.  And consider that if you do buy a built version of a Keyall with similar specs (a MOSFET SSR) a buyer will find they are fairly expensive in comparison to a Keyall HV.   Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ha...

jacksonharbor@att.net was the email address I used for the beginnings of the kit business.  The island was still dialup internet service then.  I had signed up for ATT Worldnet which had an 800 number that you called into - they then charged you for every minute of connect time on a monthly basis.  I remember one friend emailing a greeting card attachment that cost me like $4 to download !  But overall it wasn't that bad a deal until ATT dropped Worldnet - there was no way to keep my old email address :(  I've mentioned this before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/04/when-internet-changes-its-usually-for.html So when I finally got this new cell phone going I thought:  hey, sign up for a free att.net email address !  I had never been able to try this before because you had to have cell service to get an att.net email address. So I tried it and got this: I then tried sending a message to jacksonharbor@att.net via gmail and got this: so I don't know what...

A Roz Chast cartoon in The New Yorker - the bearded prophet carries a sign which reads: "THE END OF YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM IS NEAR": source:  https://media.newyorker.com/cartoons/6a0387dc4ca8f0266f755ca3/master/w_1280,c_limit/a61789.jpg I thought of this in connection with both Android and Windows (what'll Windows 10 users do when the extra year of support on Windows 10 is up later this year ?). I just got a new Android device, it had version 15 - of course right away it wanted to update to version 16.  And I *think* I might get another version updated to 17 - and that's it. But the problem is that the apps are jealous of the latest OS version - they want it to be a certain level or that's it, no dice.  With a previous Android device support ended at Android 11.  December 2025 this broke my banking app.  So I wasn't able to deposit kit checks via the app, I had to mail them in to the bank :(   Now I can use the app again on the new Android device versi...

After mentioning the Video Toy Walkie Talkies yesterday: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/05/toy-video-walkie-talkie.html I remembered when I was a kid one of my friends had one of these: from 1965 xmas catalog, remember the need to buy the crystals and battery This was a superhet, better than the blue Knight-kit C-100 super-regen walkie talkie.  The C-555 also had a volume control and an earphone jack.  Well the problem was that I didn't have the money for either a C-555 or a C-100.  Here is the closeout price: Note that the buyer still had to buy 2 crystals and a somewhat unusual 9V batter so the actual price would inflate to this: you have to add $5 worth of crystals plus a 62 cent battery to the $8.95 sale price Even at the end of the C-555 product life it was just too much money.  Eventually my Dad bought me a pair of walkie talkies like this Midland: The ones he bought were from Olson Electronics and were white but otherwise the same.  They were 50 mW supe...

A question occurred to me: how do smoke detectors monitor for battery voltage ?  Obviously it has to be a low power consumption circuit.  The smoke detectors I have emit a short beep when the 9 volt battery is low.  I actually did this with the DC Beeper kit too (the short beep when the battery is low): http://wb9kzy.com/dcbeeper.htm Why would I care about how a smoke alarm battery low detector circuit works ?   Because I've had multiple 9V Nimh rechargeable batteries go bad on me - I *think* it's due to the fact that a cell will be damaged if the battery voltage goes below a certain point, losing the voltage from that cell and driving it in reverse.  So it would be nice to have a low power battery monitor for those 9V batteries.  I suppose a DC Beeper could be used but it's somewhat complicated, large and expensive. I looked at the datasheet for this old Motorola smoke alarm IC: https://futurlec.com/Datasheet/Motorola/MC145012.pdf It's a CMOS part wit...

I was thinking about the series blocking diode addition to my recent solar panel purchase: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/04/make-or-buy.html Certainly there is a drop across the diode when the panel is charging, less than 250 mV with low current.  But is it really needed ? Looking at the solar panel itself again there are 6 wafers, each wafer has 6 groupings of photodiodes with 6-5-5-5-6 diodes each or 32 total diodes in series. count the wider horizontal dark lines to determine the number of solar cells   Per Wikipedia the output voltage of a silicon solar cell (diode) is .5 to .6 volts.  Multiply 32 diodes times .56 volts gets to roughly 18 volts which is about the rated voltage: 21.6 volts divided by 32 is .675 volts so this sounds reasonable for a no-load situation. Now since the panel is charging a lead acid AGM / gel-cell battery the highest voltage that the battery could apply to those 32 diodes is roughly 13 volts: source:  https://voltagebasics.com/lead-a...

What appears to be an AI voiced video about Heathkit: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQOG1hp54g I think the video was interesting but it really overstates the value and historical impact of Heathkit.  It also says that surface mount was the first killer of kits.  I don't think I'd go quite that far.  They rank cost as factor 2 but really surface mount was a part of driving cost lower. However I do think that Heathkit was important in my pursuit of radio and electronics as both hobby and career.  Ironically the trouble I had building the HW-16 was actually a boost: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/06/hw-16.html The HW-16 was really a receiver-transmitter.  There wasn't a lot of circuitry shared between the two halves.  The receiver was built on a circuit board and worked first time.  The transmitter was three tubes and built point to point - and much simpler than the receiver - but it didn't transmit right.  Thanks to the Heathkit m...

I do get emails from non-US hams about buying a kit, they are always told:   Previous explanation: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/04/dx-sales.html Is there any work around for this ?  One way is if the DX customer has a friend / relative in the US.  The US contact can buy the kit from me and then take care of delivery to the DX customer.  Yes, this is clunky but better than nothing. And NO, I won't give out the code or the circuit board files.  People get snippy about this but it's my business and that's the way I choose to run it. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

A customer, Jer, AA1OF, sent me pictures of his completed SMT Zerobeat kit.  It's a beautiful job of both photography AND build quality - I wish I could do work like that.  And I took the liberty of slimming down the picture size, too. I wonder about that pot marked 104, that looks aftermarket to me, but we'll allow it :) For comparison here is my photo of the prototype from the website: I stopped using those orange trimmer pots The prototype does work although not as pretty :) If interested, here is a link to the SMT Zerobeat kit (in stock): http://wb9kzy.com/smtzb.htm FYI: the SMT Zerobeat is a surface mount version of the Grandson of Zerobeat kit.  It allows a Morse code operator to quickly zerobeat a transceiver with another CW signal to within roughly +/- 10 Hz.  Just tune carefully until the center green LED is lit. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm