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Welcome to another awesome guest: Alan Yates, VK2ZAY!
- Alan works on pyrotechnics for fun(?!)
- While he’s not worried about burning out over doing similar hobby/paid work, Chris has written about burn out recently and how that might be a part of it.
- He also is an active ham operator, mostly working with PSK31 type communications.
- Ham could have been a good option for the recent SF BART shutdown.
- Low frequency transmissions could be possible with fractal antennas.
- RF, Analog, all are needed in spades in the Bay Area…or elsewhere!
- Alan did two killer designs for the 555 contest, the adding machine and the HF spectrum analyzer.
- For radiation related sites, Alan is also a fan of TechLib, Burkhard Kanika’s site and the Maxim app note 2236.
- Alan also likes the 2N4117A for an input JFET. Chris is more a fan of National’s LMP7721 for an ion chamber.
- HP has announced a drastic shift in their business by selling off their PC division and moving away from consumer goods.
- Why isn’t HP making innovative products anymore? Possibly because they’re not spending the time like they used to!
- Though it has many names, Chris just learned it is called “bootlegging” as well.
- In other news, Taiwanese companies are getting undercut by Chinese companies in parts of the already low T&M market.
- You could make your own kit (though not a new scope yet) with the newly revised Heathkits.
You can contact Alan on Twitter and see more of his great videos on his YouTube channel. We really appreciated having him on the show!
For the past couple of years, I’ve been very interested in ham radio. I’ve been to a club meeting, have some RARC books from an elmer, and have done a little study for the licence.
What I really want to do is the technical stuff. Designing radios and such… Unforuntaly, I’m finding it very difficult to find resources to learn radio contruction…
@Chris: Do you have any information on this niche (neesh!) of ham radio?
Cheers,
Dan
Dan – get yourself a copy of the ARRL Handbook.
I meant ARRL instead of RARC… Sorry! RARC is the local club.
Dan,
I can highly recommend the book Experimental Methods in Radio Frequency Design (EMRFD). It covers basically everything you need to know to build transceivers and RF instrumentation.
The book comes with useful software, and there is an online mailing list which supports it. You can ask the authors and many knowledgeable folk which frequent it.
Regards,
Alan
There’s tons of material out there (the Handbook, and EMRFD, mentioned above, are definite keepers). Here’s a couple of ham/RF web sites I like to learn from:
http://www.qrp.pops.net/
http://www.qsl.net/k3pd/book.html
And here’s a little ham radio “homebrew porn” that uses an easy technique called “Manhattan Construction.”
http://www.k8iqy.com/qrprigs/2n220/2n220Pictures.htm
Nice job Alan. Incidentally, the Netcomm Roadster was the most reliable and stable modem both in hardware and drivers that I think i ever used or had to interface to. We’ve still got a couple of them somewhere around here in shrinkwrapped boxes.
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I can understand the hobby-is-for-home attitude. If I’ve had my hands deep in hardware all day at work I don’t feel like doing hardware at home. I’ve found that if i’m doing hardware at work, I’ll do firmware/software at home and vice versa. I can understand your attitude is different if you’re working for yourself as opposed to an employer.
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I signed up for a WebOS event in Sydney the day before HP started to break the bad news. I think i’ll still go. Not sure what the mood will be like.
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I also use “foreign order” to describe side projects. Not everyone recognises the term. I used to take the liberty. We don’t seem to have time for it these days. Usually the end “product” was work related anyway. If the end product wasn’t work related, the process was work relevant. Employers should let it happen if it won’t send them to the wall. It’s got to be cheaper than training right? I think so. There’s been a number of times I’ve been able to talk sensibly about some technology, protocol or concept proposed as part of a new product because I’ve researched or actually used it for a “foreign order” in the past. And a lot of the info sticks because I was interested in it.
JD
Loved listening to this show guys! Just wanted to mention an interesting company in the US that have been really successful the past ten years or so selling awesome kits for the ham radio market: http://www.elecraft.com
I built my own Elecraft K2 rig and had a terrific time doing it some 8 years ago or so … and just thought the conversations about ham radio and the mention of Heathkit on the comeback made for an interesting combination. Couldn’t resist posting about Elecraft – I am a totally satisfied customer, and they have a terrific community of builders that support newbies into the hobby.
Good stuff here guys – keep it up!!!
Bob KC2JAV
Cincinnati, OH
When I was an apprentice we would be given all the ‘Government ‘ work to do. These were the jobs people brought in from home for repair, Irons, toasters, radios and of course the Christmas tree lights. You had to have them off the bench before 8:30 when the elephants came in, but until then you were free to work on your ‘Guvvy’ jobs. That was back in the day when people fixed things of course 🙂
I have a GW Instek analog(ue) scope. I don’t really know how to use it, but I feel good about owning it. I have had some useful times using the simple features. I managed to prove that my UV detector was working with it.
Go “GW Instek”! 🙂
The odd thing about the HP sell-off is that it only mentioned consumer PCs. It doesn’t mention all the servers, blades, storage arrays and other enterprise stuff that they sell (with much better margins then consumer stuff).
er…Chris, AMD is definitely a ‘Merican company, not German (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amd)…
Ah, so it is. I had a bunch of friends that used to work in/around AMD fabs in Germany (lots of them) before they became Global Foundries. I’ll try to clear this up next week. That was a silly mistake/assumption on my part.
Free info like this is an apple from the tree of knweodlge. Sinful?
He guys, NXP Semiconductor is also a European company, one of the chip fabs is placed in Nijmegen. A nice fact: one of the buildings has the shape of a “traditional” DIP-package. You’ll find it on google maps, coördinates are: 51.825713,5.817276
Keep on the good work! Kind regards from the Netherlands
hey all,
I enjoyed the show.
Taiwan is definitely not part of China; China does not own Taiwan or have any direct control over Taiwan. The Gov. of China of course says Taiwan is part of China but at most this is symbolic. Until recently one could not get a direct commercial flight between Taiwan and China so you might fly to Japan in between.
One indicator of the style of the relationship is that Chinese tourists of Taiwan had only been done in group tours but recently they had their first group of ‘individual tourists’. I read this in the paper during my last trip.
My employer is a Taiwan company with HQ and a small factory in Taiwan with an additional, large manufacturing presence in China. I can confidently say there are considerable differences between these two distinct countries. The capabilities are different and the ethics are different although I think the culture is kind of similar.
I know this statement touches on politics, somewhat a forbidden area but I think it is important to point out that products manufactured in or controlled from Taiwan are likely to be considerably higher quality.
On my last trip to Taiwan, one person told me that the tourists from China often seek to buy products that are made in Taiwan because they hold higher value than their own local goods. They call it “MIT” / Made in Taiwan.
Taiwan and my country, the US have long been good friends.
that said, I am not an expert… as Dave sometimes says I could be talking out of my you know what but I think I am pretty close to the facts if not right on.