Shack Background Music from Pandora Radio

Billy alerted me to Pandora. Very cool. You just give it an indication of the kind of music you'd like to listen to. They do the rest. I started out with Creedance Clearwater Revival, and Pandora proceeded to send me a stream of sort-of similar rock. Streaming audio through the web. And it is apparently all legal (you listen to a commercial every once in a while). This is great for background music in the shack. After all, you can only listen to so much SolderSmoke, and 75 meter SSB chatter is not good for you. I'm not sure if it is available outside the USA. I hope it is.
www,pandora.com

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Big Book Sale

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics"http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

The Picture You Heard in SS 136 -- FROM SPAAAACE!

In the last podcast I played a recording of some 2 meter signals picked up by my handheld transceiver from the new amateur radio satellite ArisSat-1. Included in the transmission were some tones that were obviously SSTV. Mike, K2MTS, ran the audio through some SSTV software and got this! Pretty good! From space to my HT, across the room to the SolderSmoke mic, out over the internet in podcast form, back to me in an e-mail, and now, on the blog. Thanks Mike!
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics"http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

SolderSmoke Podcast #136

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke136.mp3
August 7, 2011
Travelogue: New York City
A Stroke of Luck: Lightning strikes Rome HB DC DSB WSPR rig
It's an IGY thing: Recreating the Sputnik Transmitter
ArisSAT-1 deployed. Audio Clip (Can anyone decode the SSTV in this clip?)
Summertime SPRAT -- ZL2BMI rig and the mysteries of the '602
A writer for "The New Yorker" builds a radio
June Smithsonian Magazine has a lot of Knack
Electric Radio on AM selectivity, Japanese, and the sibilant S problem
Gathering Drake 2-B Serial numbers for use with German Tank Equation
Amazon breaks into oscillation on "Atoms to Ampere" prices
MAILBAG

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics"http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

Big Nick's Awesome Homebrew Tube Radios

Eddie, KC4LVV, alerted me to the web pages of Nick, KC9KEP. What beautiful craftsmanship! Inspirational stuff! Check out the homebrew capacitors. And the coils! And the coil winder. It's almost too much!
http://www.bignick.net/TubeRadio.htm

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics"http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

ARISSat Deployed

I just got back from a vacation trip to New York City (amazing place!) and found out that yesterday Russian cosmonauts launched the ARISSat amateur radio satellite. This one looks like lot of fun. It has a two meter downlink. I'll be doing some listening, and my try to get some of the SSTV signals.

Uh oh.... Just read a post from Mark over on Brainwagon reporting on some problems with the deployment:
http://brainwagon.org/2011/08/03/arissat-1-is-off-to-a-bumpy-start/

Details on how to use the satellite can be found here:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/ARISSat/ARISSatHowTo.php

............................................

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics"http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

Amateur radio at PAR (W4OP)

An e-mail exchange on QRP-L this morning about using ceramic resonators in 455 kHz filter circuits (great idea Grayson!) led me to the ham radio corner of the PAR electronics web site. PAR is the company run by Dale Parfitt, W4OP.
http://www.parelectronics.com/par-amateur-radio.php.
That's a nice looking 2-B Dale! Please send us the serial number! Even more impressive is Dale's award-wining homebrew solid state version of the 2-B (on the far right). Visit his web site for more info (on his site you can hover your mouse above the pieces of gear for more info).

I'm proud to say that I have a piece of gear in my shack that was built by Dale Parfitt. The story is told in SolderSmoke The Book: I'd built my own version of Doug DeMaw's Barebones Superhet and had liked it a lot. When I saw another one (this one built on a FAR circuits board) for sale on e-bay, I bought it. It stayed on the shelf for a while. Years later when I started working on it, I turned to QRP-L for help and this fellow named Dale Parfitt came to my rescue. It was only after a long series of e-mail exchanges did we realize that the receiver we were discussing had been built (and sold to me) by... Dale Parfitt.

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics"http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20