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Electronic Toys and Their Influence on Us

✇SolderSmoke Daily News
By: Bill Meara
4 July 2024 at 10:44

Mike WU2D recently put out this interesting video.  I vaguely remember the springs on the Radio Shack kits -- I also remember (bitterly) not being able to get their shortwave receiver to work.   I really wanted to tune in HCJB and Radio Moscow.  This probably led me to ask Santa for a Lafayette HA-600A receiver in 1973 or so. 

An earlier influence was the little intercom kits.  I think they worked over the AC lines?   We took some of them to the beach bungalows we had in Lavallette NJ.  With them we were able to speak clearly to similar units in nearby bunalows.  Wow, that was cool. That got me interested in radio. 

Cassette tape recorders were another early influence. I still have a recording I made with a tape recorder I got for Christmas, probably in 1972.  I used this recorder to practice CW for the ham exam. 

I managed to escape the CB madness.   But I came close to falling into the groovy psycho stuff of the early 1970s.  I remember the Transcendental Meditation gizmos.  I never built one, but if I had I may have been better off with CB. 

I kind of wish I had followed the example of the Woz and Jobs by making telephone blue boxes.  This could have led me to riches.  But as Jean Shepherd used to say, young men often come to a fork in the road: one path leads to wealth, the other to ham radio flea markets.  I got on the second path.  

Thanks Mike! 

 

Listen to me talking to Jean Shepherd in 1976. I was 18 years-old.

✇SolderSmoke Daily News
By: Bill Meara
18 March 2024 at 10:09


Wow, here is a blast from the past.  I recently read a good article about Shepherd by A. David Wunsch in the Spring 2022 issue of the AWA Journal. David correctly focused on Shep's obsession with the Heising modulator, and the very negative impact ("Your mother should take you to a doctor!") that this had on his dating life. 

I was telling my wife about this article, and I commented that I had once spoken to Shep during an early morning call-in show on WMCA New York.  I told her that someone had sent me a recording of this brief conversation. 

The call took place in 1976.  Shep was appaearing as a guest on the late-night radio show of Long John Nebel and Candy Jones.   I was 18 years old. My callsign was WB2QHL.  The recording was sent to me by Matt KC8COM in 2006. Thanks Matt!  In 2008 I played the recording during SolderSmoke Podcast #90.  But I think this call merits a post on the SoldedSmoke blog, so here it is.  You can jump forward to about 3 minutes, 49 seconds.   

http://soldersmoke.com/JeanShepherd1976WMCA.mp3

One side note.  I told my wife that some time after the broadcast, I was once again up early in the morning, kind of absent-mindedly getting ready for work when I heard Shepherd talking on WMCA to some guy about ham radio.  It took me a moment to realize that this was a re-run, and that that guy was me!  

When I first listened to this I didn't realize that later in the recording (around 9:30) another fellow calls in an asks Shep about why he uses CW.  Shep is kind of short with him and ends up advising him to "go back to CB." I should note that in my conversation with Shep earlier in the program,  I told him that I was usually on "40 sideband."  He was nice to me, but said that he was mostly on 20 CW. 



Here is a good Wikipedia article on Long John Nebel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_John_Nebel

And here's one on his wife and WMCA co-host Candy Jones: 

Thunderpole T-X handheld CB radio

✇Mike Zero Romeo Victor Bravo
By: M0RVB
15 February 2024 at 20:27

I actually spotted this little CB handheld via one of M0XFB’s Tiktok videos. CB is not particularly active round here but even so I felt a handheld bit would still make a good addition to my kit.

Thunderpole T-X handheld CB radio

It will manage the full 4W output and has both the UK FM, and EU FM / AM ranges. https://www.thunderpole.co.uk/thunderpole-t-x-overview.html explains it better than me. It has the ubiquitous rubber duck type antenna but the antenna connector usefully is a BNC. No idea what the range will be with that antenna but it’s certainly a handy little thing.

Using the Signal Integrity tool in Altium Designer – Part 2

✇Nuclearrambo
By: nuclearrambo
19 March 2023 at 13:18

In part 1 of the article series, We learnt how to set up our design for performing signal integrity analysis using Altium’s in-built Signal Integrity tool. The process turned out to be quite simple...

The post Using the Signal Integrity tool in Altium Designer – Part 2 appeared first on Nuclearrambo.

Using the Signal Integrity tool in Altium Designer – Part 1

✇Nuclearrambo
By: administrator
26 February 2023 at 19:06

Our designs are becoming faster to serve our ever-growing demands from machines. Speed brings more complexity to the design. The usual slow transitions from 0 to 1 and 1 to 0 become so fast...

The post Using the Signal Integrity tool in Altium Designer – Part 1 appeared first on Nuclearrambo.

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