From the fellows at NJQRP:
This week's session of Chat With The Designers is tomorrow evening(Tuesday), starting at 8pm Eastern (0000z) on Teamspeak. We are in for a real treat this week, as Alan Wolke, W2AEW, a field applications engineer for Tektronix, will be leading the discussion on atopic he is very familiar with ... "Oscilloscope Basics. '' If you watch an electrical engineer tackling a tough design project, or a service engineer troubleshooting a stubborn problem, you¹ll see them grab a scope, fit probes or cables, and start turning knobs and setting switches without ever seeming to glance at the front panel. To these experienced users, the oscilloscope is their most important tool but their minds are focused on solving the problem, not on using the scope. We have a Notes page set up with a terrific presentation that we¹ll betalking to in this session, so be sure you have your browser set to thisduring the discussion as well ...
http://www.njqrp.org/teamspeak/Apr10.htmlIf you¹ve not joined us for past topics, you¹ll find that we have some funin this 1-hour online meeting talking about various technical topics thatare likely of interest to homebrewers and experimenters here in our hamranks. It¹s open for everyone and all you have to do is have the Teamspeakdriver loaded onto your computer. (For guidance on this, see
http://www.njqrp.org/teamspeak/TeamspeakInstructions.html)Looking forward to seeing
(hearing) many of our 30-some regulars, and inviteothers who have not yet joined in on the fun!73, George N2APB& Joe N2CX& Alan Wolke W2AEW
Chat With The Designers ...
http://www.njqrp.org/teamspeak/TeamspeakChat.html(See this page too for past sessions and MP3 podcasts of the audio portionof each week.)PS: If you happen to follow us in our audio podcasts each week, the lastsession on ³Soldering 101² is loaded and available at:
http://www.njqrp.org/teamspeak/Mar20.html-----------------------------------------
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
I was out on the national mall yesterday morning to watch the Shuttle Discovery (atop a 747) fly over Washington DC en route to Dulles Airport and the Smithsonian Museum. Having watched Discovery when it was in orbit it was kind of bittersweet to see it go by this way. The event reminded me of going out to Hyde Park in London to watch the final overflight of the Concorde SSTs.
Conditions on 17 meters are bad today. I pulled out my 6 inch reflector telescope to do some troubleshooting on ol' sol. Yea, just as I thought: one measly sunspot. Confirmed by the SOHO image above. 
I loved this episode, and I think most of you guys will too. I was alerted to it by an article by famed comet hunter David Levy. Wow! I never would have thought that in a 1962 episode of the cowboy show Bonanza, we would find amateur astronomy and experiments to determine the speed of sound and the speed of light. Amazing. There is no radio in this so it is not really The Knack, but young Mr. Michelson (yes, the Nobel Prize winner) does set up a shack-like workshop and he is trying to measure c. So this is all very Knack-like. There is also a very nice moral to this story, a moral that is related to our notion of an International Brotherhood of Electrical Wizards. 
I really liked this interview with our friend Alan. You can see definite signs of an early case of The Knack here: I was especially impressed by the fact that he made one of his first antennas from wire salvaged from the deflection coil on an old TV. (I took the easy path and chopped up my dad's extension cords!) 