Podcasting since 2005! Listen to Latest SolderSmoke
Saturday, September 3, 2022
Where Do You Think This Variable Capacitor Came From? What Piece of Gear Did it Come out of? Is it in the Old Catalogs?
Thursday, August 25, 2022
SolderSmoke Podcast #73 Jan 2, 2008 -- AA1TJ Circuits and Poetry, Mixers, CW, Straight Key Night at WA6ARA, Boatanchors in South Africa with ZS6ADY (Part 1)
Saturday, August 20, 2022
TRIGGER WARNING: Solid-Stating Old Tube (Thermatron) Gear (Including -- GASP -- R-390As)
Sunday, July 24, 2022
A Surprisingly Good Movie from the Late 1960s: "The Ham's Wide World" (Video)
Monday, July 11, 2022
Surface-Mount Solder Smoke -- Is THIS Really Homebrew?
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Details on Pete N6QW's Wireless Set
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Frank Jones's Homebrew Rig -- as described by Michael Hopkins AB5L (SK)
"Frank is all homebrew. His receiver is unshielded outside, but built around a central square of aluminum that houses a Velvet Vernier dial thru the front panel and some tubes I did not recognize jutting horizontally on both sides of the box where coils also plug in. The transmitter is a multi-stage affair on a piece of particle board. The tubes are vertical here, and the bench was littered with brown Hammarlund coils labeled 5, 10, 20, and 80."
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2021/07/summer-reading-for-homebrewers-frank.html
https://qsl.net/ve7sl/jones%20oscillator.html
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
W1VD's Boatanchor Receiver Tests
Jay's results: http://www.w1vd.com/BAreceivertest.html
Jay's methods: http://www.w1vd.com/Receivermeasurementbasics.html
Discussion: https://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=96872
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Mr. Carlson's Grand Receiver Restoration Project -- Your Input Sought (video)
Monday, January 3, 2022
1BCG -- The 100th Anniversary of the Trans-Atlantic Test
Phil W1PJE managed to hear and record some of the 2021 transmission (Thanks Phil). Listen here:
https://drive.google.com/file/
Phil also sent this spectrogram of the signal.
Thursday, December 9, 2021
Bluetooth, Winston Churchill, The Speed of Light, and a 1938 Zenith Receiver
Hello Bill -
Saturday, December 4, 2021
A Great Morning on the Old Military Radio Net: AB9MQ's Central Electronics 20A, W3EMD's Dynamotor, WU2D
I usually try to listen in on the Old Military Radio Net on Saturday mornings (3885 kc). Lately I listen with my Mate for the Mighty Midget receiver.
This morning's session was especially good. For me the highlight was when Masa AB9MQ called in from Normal, Illinois using his Central Electronics 20A (see below). That was one of the earliest SSB rigs. A phasing rig, it also ran AM (which was what Masa was using this morning). He had it paired up with a Central Electronics 458 VFO. You folks really need to check out Masa's QRZ.com page:
Buzz W3EMD called in from Rhinebeck, NY. I could hear his dynamotor in the background. Buzz said hello to Masa in Japanese. FB.
Always great to hear Mike WU2D.
Saturday, November 13, 2021
"First Wireless" 1922 book by Allen Chapman with Foreword by Jack Binns (free download)
Sunday, October 24, 2021
WA9WFA's Mate for the Mighty Midget 1966 QST Receiver
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Kintsugi -- A Japanese Philosophy for the Owners of Imperfect Rigs
On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 4:05 PM Bob Scott wrote:
Hi Bill:After listening to the latest Soldersmoke I thought you might find the Japanese concept of "kintsugi" (literally "golden joinery") interesting.From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi#Philosophy As a philosophy, kintsugi is similar to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, an embracing of the flawed or imperfect.[11][12] Japanese aesthetics values marks of wear from the use of an object. This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken and as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting the cracks and repairs as simply an event in the life of an object rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage, and can be seen as a variant of the adage "Waste not, want not".[13]
Kintsugi can relate to the Japanese philosophy of mushin (無心, "no mind"), which encompasses the concepts of non-attachment, acceptance of change, and fate as aspects of human life.[14]
Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated... a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin....Mushin is often literally translated as "no mind," but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. ...The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.
— Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics73,Bob KD4EBM
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I shared Bob's Kintsugi message with David, WA1LBP. David was one of the few radio amateurs in the ranks of the Foreign Service. He was in Okinawa during the early 1990s, when I was in Santo Domingo. For a time we both wrote columns in the "73 International" section of Wayne Green's magazine -- this made us "Hambassadors." David is a real scholar of difficult Asian languages. During my last years in government service I would sometimes cross paths with David at lunch time on the National Mall in Washington -- he'd be out there with a colleague, studying ancient Chinese poetry.
Here are David's thoughts on this:
Thanks, Hambassador Bill.Chan embraced this account of nonduality and Buddha-nature, but distinctively used it to qualify the meaning of Buddhist practice and the personal ideal of the bodhisattva. In the Platform Sutra attributed to Huineng, he insists that
meditation is the embodiment (ti) of wisdom, and wisdom is the functioning (yong) of meditation.
The point of Chan is to see one’s own “original nature” (benxing, 本性) and realize “authentic heartmind” (zhenxin, 眞心), and in doing so the dualities of thought and reality, of passion and enlightenment, and of the impure and pure all dissolve. Then,
true suchness (zhenru, 真如) is the embodied structure (ti) of thinking, while thinking is the functioning (yong) of true suchness. (Platform Sutra, 13–17)
To see our own original nature is to see that true suchness and thinking are as intimately related as the bodily structure of a horse and its customary activities. Just as the bodily structure of the horse establishes the conditions of possibility for grazing and galloping, it is only the proven evolutionary advantage of grazing and galloping in horse-like ways that have made this bodily structure possible. True suchness or ultimate reality is not a preexistent something “out there” that can be grasped intellectually or accessed through some mystical vision; it can only be enacted.
Huangbo Yixun (d. 850) describes this as demonstrating no-“mind” (wuxin, 無心) or freedom from conceptual impositions that would define or limit reality. But this is not a lapse into mental blankness or indiscriminate presence. Realizing no-“mind” restores our originally whole mind (yixin, 一心) that Huangbo qualifies as the “silent bond” (moqi, 默契) of “conducting oneself as all Buddhas have” (in Taishō shinshō daizūkyu, Vol.48, 2012.380b to 383c). Significantly, the term “qi” originally referred to notches or tally marks on a strip of bamboo that record the terms of a trade agreement and the bonding that Huangbo invokes is thus one of mutually entrusted obligation and responsibility. True suchness consists in the personification of the bodhisattva ideal of realizing liberating forms of relationality. Ultimate reality consists in enacting the morally-inflected nonduality of wisdom and compassion.
David
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I remember that it was George Dobbs, G3RJV who introduced us to the concept of Wabi sabi:
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2010/04/homebrew-hero-george-dobbs-g3rjv.html
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
Video: E. Howard Armstrong and Early Radio
Sunday, August 22, 2021
Joe Galeski's 1960 "IMP" 3 -Tube Filter SSB Transmitter, and the Spirit of SSB Homebrew
Here is another important bit of SSB history. In May 1960, Joe Galeski W4IMP published an article in QST describing his super-simple SSB transmitter. While Tony Vitale's "Cheap and Easy" rig was a phasing design, Joe came up with a filter rig. He built USB filter at 5775 kc. With it, he ran a VXO at around 8525 kc. This put him on 20 meter USB.
Here is the QST article: http://marc.retronik.fr/AmateurRadio/SSB/A_3_tubes_filter_rig_%28SSB%29_%5BQST_1960_5p%5D.pdf
In discussing how to put this rig on other bands, Joe got the sideband inversion question exactly right:
Saturday, August 21, 2021
W2EWL's "Cheap and Easy SSB" Rig -- And The LSB/USB Convention Myth
In March 1956 Tony Vitale published in QST an article about a "Cheap and Easy" SSB transmitter that he had built around the VFO in an ARC-5 Command Set transmitter. Vitale added a 9 MHz crystal-controlled oscillator, and around this built a simple phasing generator that produced SSB at 9 MHz. He then made excellent use of the ARC-5's stable 5 - 5.5 MHz VFO. His rig covered both 75 meters and 20 meters. Here is the article:
Because it used the 9 and 5 frequency scheme, over the years many, many hams have come to think that Vitale's rig is the source of the current "LSB below 10 MHz, USB above 10 MHz." This is wrong. An example of this error popped up on YouTube just this week (the video is otherwise excellent):
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Todd K7TFC on Pessimism, Optimism, and Homebrew Radio
In response to my blog post about Rob Sherwood, Todd K7TFC sent this very thoughtful comment. It is so good that I wanted to put it up as a more visible blog post. Thanks Todd.
Todd wrote:
Several of 4Z1UG's recent interviews have either hinted at or clearly expressed pessimism over the future of technically-oriented, homebrew ham radio. Of an age myself (another IGY baby) in which disgruntled cynicism is endemic, I nevertheless found their pessimism exaggerated and perhaps a little-too conventional.
Not that there's little evidence to back them up: recent retirements at QST and the magazine's thin technical coverage have not improved matters, and even QRP Quarterly recently found it necessary to spend more pages on UFOs in New Mexico than on VFOs in their readers's hamshacks. Even podcasts whose names might suggest otherwise--I'm thinking of Ham Radio Workbench--actually spend more time talking about store-bought black boxes, antennas, and cool things they've purchased (or want to purchase) than melting solder or winding coils. To be sure, HRWB, QRPQ, and even QST, make important contributions , but they do reflect the *proportional* decline of hands-on electronics.For me, though, that the *proportion* of homebrewing, technically-oriented hams has declined is not as important as the actual numbers of hams so oriented. If their proportion is down to, say, five-percent of the total number of hams in the world, that's still *a lot* of homebrewers worldwide, and now that we interact in a truly-global theater of enthusiasts, we've never had it so good when it comes to the numbers of people who share our enthusiasms.
This question of actual numbers versus proportions can be seen in the most common modes of operation as well as on the hardware side. SSB long ago passed CW as the mode-of-choice, and now SSB is in decline *proportionally* as the weak-signal digital modes seem to be taking over. But when the bands are open, you can still tune through the lower portions of most bands and find *plenty* of CW ops at all levels of speed and clarity. CW is not dead, and in fact it's easier to learn than ever before. I expect a proportion will always see CW as essential to ham radio--enough in fact to keep them supplied with contacts to satisfy their retro-cravings and keep the tradition alive.
I may be in the last quarter (third?) of my life, but the older I get the more I come to believe in living *three-dimensionally*. The "X" is my own time and place (a west-coast Boomer), the "Y" is my own time but other places and cultures, and the "Z" is other eras, times, and places. The "other eras and times" in the ham-radio context means I don't have to abandon tank circuits and crystal filters and vacuum tubes *merely* because other and perhaps objectively-superior technology is now at my disposal. I can use the new stuff and the old stuff, too. I'd even argue that to abandon all use of older technologies means there's been no *growth*, only "progress."
We see this clearly enough in other aspects of the human endeavor. The computer may have totally replaced the typewriter, but it hasn't replaced pen, ink, and paper. The internet may be a superior repository of knowledge than printed books, but books and magazines are still widely used and are in some ways superior to online media. Microwave ovens cooking prepackaged, processed, and *manufactured* food are more efficient, but no one denies a meal made with raw whole foods and hand-prepared is better.
I expect there will always be plenty of people living three-dimensionally as hams with whom I resonate. There's already a high SWR between me and *most* people anyway. I've grown comfortable with a more-narrow bandwidth--73, Todd K7TFC