This might not seem like it has a lot to do with homebrew radio, but I had it playing as I was going through a similar level of agony with a recalcitrant NE602 frequency readout. I found it reassuring that I was not alone in my agony.
We see a lot of applicable stuff in this video. Note how he tries to suppress some toublesome noise using electrolytics, resistors, and ceramic caps. He thinks he has the problem solved, until he loads the entire thing in the case, at which point the problem returns. Sound familiar? Indeed, he found that inside the case an unshielded cable ended up too close to a noise-carrying wire.
He also comments on the need to do a full system check before flight. Good point.
It will be cool to watch the video that this device is built to capture. Stay tuned.
Joe always pushes hard on the limits of what an amateur can do working more or less alone in a home workshop.
ReplyDeleteHis gyro stabilization idea reminds me of a model-rocket design contest put on by Estes--maybe around 1970? (It was after Apollo 11 but before I started high school in '71). I submitted a design that called for a flywheel inside the main body tube with the axis of rotation aligned with the tube. The flywheel would have permanent magnets glued to its circumference and a U-shaped motor stator--entirely external to the rocket--would be used at the launch pad to spin up the flywheel just before launch. I apparently was confident enough of the stabilizing power of the flywheel that I left off any fins.
The folks at Estes sent me a nice letter of thanks after the contest was over but said the "design" (I never actually built it) was far-too complicated for practical use by other (teenage) rocketeers. They also pointed out that it violated the Estes "Rocketeer's Code of Conduct" that required aerodynamic stability (fins). The rejection left me sadder but, alas, no wiser.
Had it been more than a half-century later, I could have, like Joe Barnard, put out a series of You Tube videos that made entertainment out of hare-brained ideas, which each failure giving delight to devoted viewers. Additionally, I could claim I had been suppressed by the Establishment (Estes) who saw a threat to their fin-based hegemony. After all, I was following in the heroic steps of the martyred Nicola Telsa, Howard Armstrong, and other self-aggrandizing "geniuses." And then in true adolescent-boy fashion, I could have signed off each episode with the question, "Who is John Galt?"