A Crummy Commercial

"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...

Referring again to the recent buy of stuff from Ebay mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/06/buy-first-think-later.html I started fooling with the Ameco Code Practice Oscillator: from the original listing It looked a little grungy both outside and inside but it did fire up.  There are two holes marked N and P which must have been used for wiring to an external supply / charger.  Inside a mod was made to the battery holder (A Keystone, they still sell them !) to add a diode and two GE AA Nicads.  Of course the Nicads have leaked to the extent of having the wiring to the holder corrode off. As a first step I removed all the screw and bolts from the front panel: And then washed it with some liquid soap: I think it looks OK.  Here's a photo of the CPO parts themselves: Next step will be to replace that battery holder with something new - not sure if I should get the original Keystone or just use a plastic one.  I'll have to think about it.  OK, I th...

One of the items from the most recent electronic assortment purchased on Ebay: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/06/buy-first-think-later.html was a Heathkit HD-1410 iambic keyer.  It's a 5 IC TTL keyer with a discrete transistor clock generator, iambic B and a universal keying output for both cathode and grid block rigs.  The design is simpler than the WB4VVF Accu-keyer.  The HD-1410 also has an AC supply built in as well as mechanical paddles, a sidetone and a tune switch - it's a pretty complete design. So I was hoping that it might just work at first try.  I was disappointed :(  One minor problem was that the included AC cord didn't quite fit right.  It will power the unit but if the cord sags or is moved it loses contact.  One way around this might be to replace the chassis AC power connector with an IEC "computer" connector ?  I'll have to think about it.  Similarly the DC power input uses some Molex connector for which I don't have a ma...

I saw this illustration titled: "A Simple Method for Reading Pictures by Wire or Radio" on Pinterest: I counted 48 squares across, assume the same height that's 2304 squares total.  Send a Morse code digit from 0 to 9 for each square (1 to 10 as shown doesn't make sense to me).  The actual time to send a picture would depend on the picture (a polar bear in the arctic would probably be the longest assuming white => zero. The longest Morse digit by time spent is the five dahs of a zero.  But certainly a real photo would take a LONG time. This method is the basis for picture storage and transmission to this day. Oh yeah: the guy sending is a lid, a tapper :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I saw these items listed on Ebay from my favorite purveyor of miscellaneous electronic stuff: The assortment was $26.38 with tax/postage - I saw the HD-1410 keyer (don't need another one but why not ? it has the rare AC power cord) - also an Ameco CPO (don't need that either but never had one) - finally the seller mentions that they don't know what the mini blue device (upper right) is:   I KNOW, it's a DSW transceiver from Small Wonder Labs, 1st generation, the $15 on top is not a bad price either.  Depending on which band it is, I may or may not already have one :) BTW this is the same seller I got the AADE LC meter from mentioned previously: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/10/just-because-i-could.html I suspect that I'll have to fix the DSW (and probably the keyer and CPO, too) as I did with the AADE LC meter but it'll be something to do ! update 7-7-2026:  I received the box of stuff on Monday (7-6) and will have more blog posts as I work through the stuff....

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...

How many zillions of 555 based code practice oscillators are there beeping away ?  Probably quite a few - I remembered that my MorseMaster II project has one, previously mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/02/bad-cap.html     But the original MorseMaster II design by Mike, KJ4LN cleverly upgraded the 555, adding shaping to the waveform and RC filtering: So I thought about adding those circuits to my MorseMaster.  One interesting note: the 555 in the Morsemaster II runs continuously so really the circuits add keying, shaping and filtering.  The steady 555 current doesn't matter that much considering the power used by the microcontroller is fairly high. First, using a solderless breadboard, here are the full pulse and the zoom in on ramp up / down waveforms all at the the collector of Q4: . 4 ms rise time 8 ms fall time Next, here is the shaped square wave, with rise and fall zooms: That's about as far as I gotten so far, I'll add the filter and LM380...

In the olden days of the 20th century Morse code keys were so common and cheap that you could do stuff like this: source on page 38:  https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-TV-Experimenter/Radio-TV-Experimenter-1967-08-09.pdf BTW, I don't know what they are talking about at the end: "since most keys have both a make and a break contact" - I've never seen this - keys are single-pole-single-throw AFAIN.  I think the only way I could sanction this project is using one of those cheap keys with a plastic base like this one that came with the Knight-kit LC-1 CPO: Now Digi-Key doesn't sell keys (if they ever did).  They *might* sell you Fahnestock clips: (the key relay uses two Fahnestock clips) at $3.54 each in quantity 1000 and they have to be special ordered ! Yeah, I don't think I'm going to go into the key as relay kit business anytime soon ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

On The Beach by Nevil Shute is yet another atomic war, doomsday book / movie from the late 50s early 60s.   I recently did a Costanza, watched the movie instead of reading the book: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQY-4upNr7Q So I don't know how well it stuck to the book.  It was a Stanley Kramer production, usually his movies dealt with serious, important subjects although there was It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World :)   In On The Beach Ava Gardner was still a beauty and Gregory Peck was still handsome - certainly a watchable movie although a little long.  And there was a plot point related to radio and Morse code which I won't spoil.  Hearing  Waltzing Matilda  over and over becomes a little tiring after a while though. I did like the use of black and white film, somehow On The Beach,  Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe hit a little harder than they would have in color. https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/05/book-report-red-al...

I dug out the Morsemaster II, last mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/11/morsemaster-switches-part-ii.html I tried it out but it didn't seem to be working.  After fiddling with it a little I could hear a really faint stream of Morse code.  After opening it up I decided that the earphone jack might be bad so I took it out - WRONG. The sidetone uses a 555 timer circuit, some variation of which has been used by many hams for a CPO.  I finally realized it was the 220 uF output cap.  So I replaced it with a 100 uF cap (all I had at hand) and bingo, it worked, very loud and thumpy !  I had to turn down the volume. it wasn't born bad - it became bad  :) I decided to check the cap value, the AADE LC Meter manual cautions against polarized caps so I dug out the B&K 810C cap meter.  Here is the reading: So sometime along the line that cap lost almost all of the original value.  And since capacitive reactance is inversely related to capacit...

The summer of the moon landings, 1969, I had graduated from grade school and was about to start high school.  So I took a couple of summer classes at Nicolet High School.  The first one was mechanical drawing - this was way before computerized drawing CAD programs of course.  But the other course was touch typing.  And then I never did any typing again for 4 years !  Also you don't remember touch typing without using it.  Finally, touch typing depends a LOT on the particular keyboard layout - muscle memory gets developed and it's hard (at least for me) to shift to a different keyboard on a computer.  I never really nailed down touch typing numbers (and certainly shifted number symbols) but now I can sorta no look type but with the caveat of lots of mistakes.  I remember a fellow named Tony at GTE would marvel at how fast I could type on the Sentry IC tester terminal and how fast I could make mistakes :) It turns out that I didn't really ever use t...

I was looking at the July 1959 issue of QST and saw this article: source:  https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/50s/QST-1959-07.pdf A really clever design.  I remember seeing a book detailing a "computer" that used a rotary dial for data entry but never had seen a dial used for Morse code before.  And in all my years as a kid who liked to take things apart I never actually took a dial apart !  I've got "two tree" dial phones around here, I may have to remedy that ! Here are the only diagrams from the article, too bad they didn't show the complete set of 19 dials but I guess QST space was too valuable for that.  I can see where the dah heavy numbers would require a dial to themselves although several shorter characters can be put on the same dial. This kind of mechanical approach to Morse code sending reminds me of this previous blog on a contest "memory keyer" by K2UBC: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-mechanical-memory-contest-k...