A boy's passport to the world

Charlotte Observer ^ | 6/1/08 | Joe DePreist

[mylife]

Awww jeez... radios and guns? ;)

[Bobalu]

I think the one in the image is on 40mtrs.
You can get one for 80,40,30 or 20 meters.

Listen on these frequencies and you will eventually hear a rockmite.

AVAILABLE FREQUENCIES:

3560 kHz

3579 kHz

7015 kHz

7030 kHz

7040 kHz

7122 kHz

10106 kHz

14060 kHz

[JRandomFreeper]

Well, yeah.... ;)

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

I gotta get some real antennas up here. I've been in the house for over 2 years and don't have anything over 30 ft.

/johnny

[Bobalu]

I have a full length dipole up for 160 meters.
I feed it with parallel line (twin lead) and use it with a little tuner on all bands... with good results.
Mostly QRP but sometimes I put 100 watts into it.

Lately I have got the bug to play with long range wifi using some surplus PrimeStar satellite dishes with little USB wifi dongles at the feedpoint.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=primestar+usb+wifi&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

[JRandomFreeper]

I do wifi for a living. You would be amazed at what you can do. 24"dish with a dongle, 100 meters through a chain link fence is normal for me.

My commercial 802.11a (5ghz) links are easily 10klicks/jump.

Lots of fun stuff out there.

Link management is probably the hardest part. 5G is funny on propogation.

/johnny

[mylife]

Thats pretty impressive for such a low power device

[JRandomFreeper]

I haven't done HF for probably 6 years. I just fired up the old Drake R-4B, and it seems to work. Got a mag-mount stick antenna (40 meters) up on the metal shed out back for an antenna.

It's been so long I don't even know what bands are open during what parts of the day.....

And I gotta do something about the grounding. That antenna has voltage on it, even without a transmitter running.

/johnny

[dragnet2]

Now he can listen to a bunch of grumpy old men arguing about the need for learning code.

I just talked to a guy on the southseas North Cook Island, American Samoa..It was a very interesting conversation about life on the Island, weather and politics...He wasn't grumpy or old, and code was never brought up.

Talked to a guy in the Ukraine a few days ago..Nice guy. We talked about current events etc. Lots of fun and very interesting.

[JRandomFreeper]

So much for that.... the old Drake went tango uniform with the smell and sound of frying xformer. I wonder how easy those parts are to find....

/johnny

[mylife]

A transformer shouldn’t be had to find

[mylife]

And what could go wrong with a transformer? Its just coils

I bet yer voltage reg went TU hope it didn’t fry anything downstream

[mylife]

Bet a cap went pop

[Squantos]

Give me a clear day and a set of semaphore flags !.......:o)

[JRandomFreeper]

Looks like an old wax cap (1000mfd 15wv) went tango uniform as well. That may have caused it. It's been years since I troubleshot an old rig like this. It ain't gonna be pretty.

This rig hadn't been fired up in over 7 years. Transformer failure modes can include: Overcurrent because of failed component on the load side; thermal expansion causing tired old varnish on the wire to fail and short; latent fault that finally shorted. And the other reason, that I can't think of... that was probably it.

/johnny

[mylife]

Well. them old caps dry out. Most of the rest of the stuff should be in decent shape.

Well... age does get to everything but old style caps are very suseptable

[JRandomFreeper]

LOL! But the opportunity to fall off a ladder or electrocute ones-self are truly inviting. Not to mention listening to grumpy old men argue about code requirements... and if it's that important? why aren't they in the novice slot, working newbies to help them practice code. ;)

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

I think it took out the xformer. The popping and sizzling went on for 5 minutes after I unplugged it.

/johnny

[Squantos]

Agree......... When I have more time I will set down and give it a try ! Right now I don’t even have time too go help Eaker & HAT Inc kill themselves with fun !

[mylife]

I knew a fellow that fixed a sonar on a sub making a cap out of tinfoil,waxpaper and toothpaste. Son of a bitch got a medal! They would have to have scrapped the mission for lack of parts!