Dalibor Farny: Making Nixie Tubes in a Castle in the Czech Republic

“Our customers are interested in technology – some people buy paintings for their wall; our customers buy a technical piece of art. I think they appreciate the fact that someone is keeping old technology alive and they want to support us."

Dalibor Farny is manufacturing Nixie tubes and devices that use them.  He is working out of a castle in the Czech Republic.  Above is a video about his renovation of his workshop.  It was nice that he involved his kids in the project. 

This article tells his story: 
https://hackspace.raspberrypi.org/articles/meet-the-maker-dalibor-farny

Here is his website: https://www.daliborfarny.com/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0IY1BQiMehWMvezqWLyk4g

Builds Oscilloscope at age 12! Nick has THE KNACK

Thanks to Grayson Evans for sending us this very encouraging video.  
It is from Tektronix;  I wonder if Alan W2AEW provided some ideas and inspiration? 

More stories like this:  https://www.tek.com/stories  

Twenty-nine S-38s on Craig's List

This is almost like a nightmare.  I guess it could be worse -- they could all be E models. 

https://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/ele/d/arlington-twenty-nine-29-variouss/7188621508.html

Thanks to Jim W3BH for alerting us to this, uh, opportunity. 

Marc Verdiell Has The Knack

Here is Marc Verdiell, the "Curious Marc" who repaired the Soyuz Clock (shown in yesterday's blog post).  

Really cool.  Many SolderSmoke fans will completely understand Marc and his passion for 
electronics. 

Taming Glitches in a Soyuz Space Clock (Plus -- Inside a Logic Chip and How Crystals Work)

Thanks to Bob KD4EBM for sending this.  

There is so much good info in this video:  They crack open a logic chip and look at the internal construction (it is entirely understandable by mortal minds).  They use cool test gear to troubleshoot the clock from a Soyuz spacecraft.  They explain very clearly the series and parallel resonances of quartz crystals, then display these resonances on a very nice spectrum analyzer.

The creator of the video is CuriousMarc.  He has many other interesting projects: 

https://www.youtube.com/c/CuriousMarc/featured

https://www.curiousmarc.com/ 

His bio is here: 

https://www.curiousmarc.com/about

One paragraph from his bio really resonated with me: 

Working on this old stuff forces me to deal with the very fundamentals of electronics (and electro-mechanics). The principles are exactly the same as today, but nothing is hidden in mysterious circuits - you can understand and fix everything. Years of Moore's law has sure given us gobs of transistors, oceans of memory and a glut of gigacycles, but many times, particularly in consumer hardware, these are simply used to cover up poor and inefficient designs - and resource devouring software. What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away, as they say. It often irritates me that my PC takes several seconds to react to a simple command, in which time it must have executed billions of unnecessary instructions and consumed a few gigabytes of memory, no one knowing exactly what for anymore. Nothing like this in old high-end hardware: designs are pure and efficient, and the lack of resources is compensated by engineering mastery and immense cleverness, which is a joy to reverse engineer. Not only does it teach us timeless electrical fundamentals and engineering tricks, but it also gives us a much better appreciation of today's tech. How did all the technology we take for granted came to be? It will make you a far better engineer and inventor if you take the time to be a thorough student of the inventions of your illustrious predecessors.

Global Collaboration: The uSDX -- A Multi-Mode QCX

Bill:

There is a new open source, home brew, multi band, multi mode QRP transceiver that grew out of the QRP Labs QCX. Through some serious magic it retains an efficient class E RF amplifier for sideband and digital modes. It crams impressive SDR capabilities into an Arduino. More info at https://groups.io/g/ucx/topics

The basic work appears to have been accomplished by Guido Ten Dolle PE1NNZ. It uses pulse width modulation of the PA supply voltage to transmit  modes other than CW while retaining class E efficiency and uses a direct conversion SDR receiver.

 https://github.com/threeme3/QCX-SSB .

There are several variants by different developers. I built a variant designed by Barbaros Asuroglu WB2CBA  

https://antrak.org.tr/blog/projeler/usdx-an-arduino-based-sdr-all-mode-hf-transceiver-pcb-iteration-v1-02/ that uses through hole components (mostly) and I'm pleased with it's performance. I also designed and 3D printed a case.

This has an interesting development process with contributions by many, including the usual gang of suspects: Hans Summers, Ashhar Farhan, Manuel DL2MAN, Kees K2BCQ, Allison KB1GMX and Miguel Angelo Bartie PY2OHH. I apologize to the many others whose names I didn't list.

The band switch multiband version by DL2MAN is even smaller, but with SMD components which I wasn't ready to tackle yet.

BTW - your podcast encouraged me to go in this direction. I built a BITX 40, a uBITX (sent you a pix of it in an old Heathkit Twoer case), U3S, QCX and now my first step from kits to built from plans.

73

Bob   KD8CGH

https://antrak.org.tr/blog/projeler/usdx-an-arduino-based-sdr-all-mode-hf-transceiver-pcb-iteration-v1-02/

Music Video -- "The Spirit of Radio" by Rush

Thanks to Thomas from The SWLing Post for putting this on his blog.

Andreas Spiess (The Guy with Swiss Accent) -- Workshop Tips

Thanks to Paul Taylor VK3HN for alerting me to the YouTube channel of Andreas Spiess.  There are lots of great projects there, including several videos on building an Oscar 100 ground station.  

In the video above, Andreas talks about his lab/workshop.  He is more focused on digital projects than I am, but I found many of his tips applicable to the analog world. And of course the more digitally oriented readers will find Andreas's observations especially useful. 

I was sold on this video when Andreas reached to his book shelf and showed us Tracey Kidder's "Soul of the New Machine."   That is the book that brought the word "soul" into the SolderSmoke lexicon. 

There are many great videos on Andreas's channel.  I found his Playlists page to be a good way to see the many different catergories of his projects: 

https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasSpiess/playlists

Thanks Andreas. 

A Song Fom Dexter ZL2DEX

From a post on on "ZL Amateur Radio & Friends,"  in response to a complaint about the lack of activity (with apologies to Paul Simon):  

'50 Ways':

"Get on the band, Stan,
Trigger the mic, Ike,
Tap your key, Lee,
Listen for me.
Paddle the bug, Doug,
Watch the waterfall, Paul,
Just QSO, Joe,
when conditions agree."

73

Dex, ZL2DEX

Chuck Adams K7QO's AMAZING Lab Notebook

Thanks to Tony G4WIF for alerting me to this amazing (and free!) e-book by QRP Master Builder Chuck Adams K7QO: 

https://www.k7qo.com/lab.pdf

There is a lot of wisdom and tribal knowledge in that .pdf.  

Thanks Chuck.