"Snort Rosin" Seal of Approval for "Ferrari-esque" Italian Wire Cutters

And now for something (almost) completely different.  Rarely have wire cutters been described in such, well, almost erotic terms.  This definitely seems like the stocking-stuffer of the year for the SolderSmoke in-crowd.  And to think that I was pleased with a pair of $3.99 hemostats that I got from Amazon.

Hi Bill,

It's always nice to find something high-quality and inexpensive and today it happened to me so I thought I'd share my good fortune.

Having been in the professional radio repair business for 40 years (retired 2012), I very much appreciate quality hand tools.  On my bench at home I have an expensive pair of Lindstrom wire cutters but in the field I generally resorted to cheaper, not so high-quality tools (in case of inadvertent loss).  The problem at home is it seems like every time I need to grab my Lindstroms, they're not where I'm at so I've been on the lookout for a spare pair or two of quality cutters.  Well, today in the Fry's Electronic newspaper flyer I saw an ad. for Hakko brand wire cutters on sale for $2.99, regularly $4.99, a 40% saving.  Me being, shall we say, "thrifty",  this immediately got my attention.  I know Hakko markets some very good soldering related equipment, however until today I had no experience with their line of hand tools. 

So, between some appointments this morning I stopped at our local Fry's store and checked out the cutters.  I was expecting to find something typically cheap and made in China so imagine my surprise at discovering they are made in Italy!  The part # of this particular tool is CHP-170 and is mfg. by the CHP Tools division of Hakko.  The hand grips are palm-fitting and very comfortable with thumb and forefinger rests at the top of each for tool manipulation.  The design is what I would call "Ferrari-esque"; bright red with black accents.  Very pleasing to the eye.  Turns out that The metal parts are  high grade tool steel and Parkerized for low reflectivity and high wear and corrosion resistance.  What impressed me the most is the cutting surfaces; they mate perfectly.  So many inexpensive cutters have lousy mating surfaces, these don't.  With the cutting edges 'closed', shining a high-intensity light on one side results in -no- light 'leaking' by the mated edges.  That's first-class machining! 

IMO, even at the typical price of $5 or so, these cutters are a bargain, especially considering the quality (how does one say, "it is very good!" in Italian?).  So, if you or anyone you know is in the market for some great wire cutters, tell them that the Hakko CHP-170 has the "Snort Rosin" seal of approval, HA!

73.......Steve Smith WB6TNL
 http://www.amazon.com/Hakko-CHP-170-Maximum-Cutting-Capacity/dp/B00FZPDG1K

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"The Amateur Scientist" by C.L. Stong (FREE!)

This great book is available on-line:   You guys will really like it:

https://archive.org/details/TheAmateurScientist


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Renaissance Man Illustrator for Scientific American

C.L. Stong wrote the "Amateur Scientist" column for Scientific American for many years.  When I was a boy, my mom saved up to buy me the anthology of Strong's columns.  It had a big impression on me -- I still have a copy on my shelf.  I never gave much thought to the illustrations, but I now realize that they were responsible for much of the impact that that book had on me.  The cloud chamber drawing was one of my favorites.  Note the use of peanut-butter jars.  Yea!  
 
This morning an article on the Maker blog focused on the genius who did all those wonderful drawings:  Roger Hayward (I wonder if there is any relation to Wes and Roger -- all three are from Oregon and all three are technical geniuses.)
 
I found this very nice web site about Roger Hayward: http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/hayward/introduction/introduction/
There are great illustrations in many places.  For the Scientific American drawings go to the 1960s section.

And check out this one:

From: http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/items/show/4456

 
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W4OP -- Earth-Moon-Earth and Another Barebones Superhet

Years ago I bought a Barebones Superhet from Dale Parfitt on E-bay.  Several years after that, having forgotten who I bought it from, I was asking questions about how to get it working on 17 meters.  Dale jumped in with some very helpful e-mails.  It took us both a while to realize that I was working on the receiver that he had built.  Dale is active in a really wide range of ham radio activities, everything from QRP to EME.  Check out his homebrew projects here (I really like his Solid State Drake 2-B!) http://www.parelectronics.com/par-homebrew-projects.php 
And his vintage projects here: http://www.parelectronics.com/vintage-radio-restoration.php
And here's what Dale has been doing with the Moon (that's his 15 foot dish in the picture): 

 

Hi Bill,

 

I thought of you today when I won a Bare Bones Barbados RX on eBay for $5. I am going to team it with a DDS VFO and a matching TX.Some parts are apparently missing, but i have a huge junk box and also know how to order from Mouser should the junk box fail me.

 

 

Right now I am putting my solid state 650W 1296MHz EME amp , Power Supply, meters etc. in its waterproof cabinet so I can mount it right at the dish and not incur any feedline losses.

 

1296 is probably the best EME band. Power is getting easier and easier to acquire (although solid state is around $5/watt), dishes are fairly easy to acquire or build and  perhaps most importantly, we all use circular polarity feeds with no relays/hybrids. Activity weekend can sound like 20M, with a number of stations just ragchewing on CW and SSB.

 

73,

Dale W4OP
for PAR Electronics, Inc.
http://www.parelectronics.com

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Thermitron (Tube, Valve) Op-Amps

It is kind of appealing.  I like it better than the 741.  This one you can take apart and see how it works.   Thanks Rogier!

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On the suffering of Geeks. Indeed, we suffer...

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11 MHz IF for new BITX 20/40 Dual Bander? Also: Cabinetry and Socketry

I am gathering parts and ideas for a BITX dual bander (20 and 40 meters).  I know Farhan used a 10 MHz filter for his "Simple SSB Transceiver."  But I was thinking of going a bit higher, to 11 MHz. This would allow me to run the VFO from 3.175 to 3.355 for 20 meters, and 3.695 to 3.875 for 40 meters. I'm hoping that I can do this with one single VFO (Farhan used two VFOs), perhaps with a reed relay switching in some additional capacitance for the other band. I'll also follow Farhan's lead and switch the Low-Pass and Band-Pass filters with DPDT relays.

I set up a simple spread sheet and looked at the VFO harmonics to see if any fell within the desired tuning ranges.  That looks OK. I have not looked at mixing products between VFO and BFO.  What do you folks think?   Would the 11 MHz IF for these bands work?  Or are there evil birdies lurking in my future?

I've gone ahead and bought another wood box for the new rig (I didn't even have to suffer through a second visit to the crafts store -- they are available on Amazon).  I also got a roll of copper sheeting at Home Depot.  This time I will prepare the box first, lining the inside with copper and preparing all the "socketry" (George Dobbs' word) before putting the PC board in.

 

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First Pictures of the Far Side of the Moon (1959!)

On October 7, 1959, the Soviets sent an "automatic interplanetary station" to the moon.  This, in itself, was an amazing achievement.  Even more amazing is how they managed -- using 1950s technology -- to photograph the far side of the moon and get the images back to the earth. 

The Soviet document on the Harvard site (below) says that the transmitter put out "a few watts" and used semiconductors.  There appears, however, to have been at least one vacuum tube aboard (the cathode ray tube used to scan the chemically developed photo negatives).  Frequency modulated analog video similar to FAX) was used to send the data.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1962IAUS...14....7L/0000007.000.html

From Wikipedia:

Luna-3 was the first successful three-axis stabilized spacecraft. During most of the mission, the spacecraft was spin stabilized, but for photography of the Moon, the spacecraft oriented one axis toward the Sun and then a photocell was used to detect the Moon and orient the cameras towards it. Detection of the Moon signaled the camera cover to open and the photography sequence to start automatically. The images alternated between both cameras during the sequence. After photography was complete, the film was moved to an on-board processor where it was developed, fixed, and dried. Commands from the Earth were then given to move the film into a scanner where a spot produced by a cathode ray tube was projected through the film onto a photoelectric multiplier. The spot was scanned across the film and the photomultiplier converted the intensity of the light passing through the film into an electric signal which was transmitted to the Earth (via frequency-modulated analog video, similar to a facsimile). A frame could be scanned with a resolution of 1000 (horizontal) lines and the transmission could be done at a slow-scan television rate at large distances from the Earth and a faster rate at closer ranges.
The camera took 29 pictures over 40 minutes on 7 October 1959, from 03:30 UT to 04:10 UT at distances ranging from 63,500 km to 66,700 km above the surface, covering 70% of the lunar far side. Seventeen (some say twelve) of these frames were successfully transmitted back to the Earth, and six were published (frames numbered 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, and 35). They were mankind's first views of the far hemisphere of the Moon.

More info: http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/Luna3story.html#Film

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A British Bicycle (and Workshops)

Experiments in Speed from SpindleProductions on Vimeo.


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BITX Build Update #20 -- Switchable Crystals, South Africa QSO

I got tired of popping the hood and manually changing my VXO crystals.  First I tried to switch the rocks using a rotary switch on the front panel, but I think the leads were too long and the output was kind of squirrely.   So I dug around in the junk box and found a 12 volt double pole double throw relay.  I put the crystal sockets across the two poles and ran leads from the armature terminals to the crystal terminals. I use the rotary switch to activate the relay.  I cover about 41 kHz of the 17 meter band with the two crystals. 

17 meters has been in great shape.  On November 16 I had a very nice contact with Syd, ZS1TMJ in Glenwilliam, South Africa.  That's about 8000 miles on 5 watts SSB.   

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