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You are here: Home / Guest Appearance / #117 – Interview with Alan Wolke – Undulating Utensil Utility

#117 – Interview with Alan Wolke – Undulating Utensil Utility

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Welcome Alan Wolke, W2AEW!

  • Alan started his career helping out in a TV repair shop, servicing the tubes in old TVs
  • He’s also a ham operator, callsign W2AEW, which is also the username on his awesome YouTube account!
  • And he’s helping some local Boy Scout troops earn their merit badge and helping during the Jamboree on the Air (JOTA).
  • The training will take place on a former part of Camp Evans/Fort Monmouth, which was the former home of the Marconi Wireless company in NJ. Project Diana was also run there, the first time they bounced radio off the moon.
  • Alan also worked at Lytel, which was a startup back in the early networking/telecom days.
  • After some stints at Vitesse Semi and Agere Systems, he finally ended up at Tektronix as an RF application engineer, where he still works today. (And now he blogs for them as well!)
  • Now Alan has a YouTube channel as well, which has many awesome videos, some of our favorites are below:
    • [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FYF5uhCzAM[/tube]
    • [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Zt_LJX1Tc[/tube]
    • [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwo3pEH7hUE[/tube]
  • Dave has a list of things that digital scopes that analog can’t do, but all 3 suggest an analog scope to start out.
  • Alan had a great EEWeb interview which we didn’t talk about but is worth reading.
  • Online, Alan can be found on Twitter at @alanattek. Or his personal website, Dorkage.com.
  • Check out his bench below:

 

Comments

  1. Vlad says

    October 15, 2012 at 2:13 am

    Jamboree.

  2. Слободан says

    October 15, 2012 at 5:04 am

    The old website looked much better.

    • Слободан says

      October 15, 2012 at 5:43 am

      I hate HAARP. We have droughts in Serbia because of that.
      As they drew a line with a ruler: http://facebookreporter.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/553894_10151157654309797_1049229137_n.jpg

      • Yi Yao says

        October 15, 2012 at 3:39 pm

        Its hard to imagine anything with more output power than the woodpecker. All the woodpecker could do was make phone calls annoying. Anything powerful enough to cause massive weather changes like that would be very involved.

        • Слободан says

          October 16, 2012 at 6:20 am

          Sorry, I didn’t understand what you meant, especially the woodpecker part.

          P.S. I meant to say in the last comment: “As IF they drew a line with a ruler”.

          • Charlie says

            October 29, 2012 at 11:25 pm

            I think he refers to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Woodpecker

            Charlie

    • Frank Cohen says

      October 15, 2012 at 1:23 pm

      I don’t agree. The new layout is much batter, save for the awful cursive font.

      • Chris Gammell says

        October 15, 2012 at 9:46 pm

        Yup, plan to work on that. Otherwise, I like it better as well. So much less cluttered.

        • rasz says

          October 15, 2012 at 10:05 pm

          So much less information (number of comments visible on main page???)
          + awful color scheme, forces me to move my head closer to distinguish between yellowy poop background and more grayish poop font colors.

          • amp hour listener says

            October 16, 2012 at 2:44 am

            I agree.

            Great podcast, but…

            The gray font on light gray background is hard to read and the textured backgrounds make the site feel cluttered.

            • Chris Gammell says

              October 16, 2012 at 3:08 pm

              Haha, did you see the old site? Clutter was the name of the game! This one is much more open, in almost every way.

              • hlavac says

                October 18, 2012 at 5:21 am

                Haha it makes us write in vertical noodles

          • Chris Gammell says

            October 16, 2012 at 3:06 pm

            Poop, eh?

            I agree with the font changes, like I said I’ll look into it. The colors don’t seem that bad to me. As for the comments thing, why are you worried about that? Are you looking to see when people have left a new comment? Would there be some other way to let you know that the comments have changed, perhaps by subscription?

            • rasz says

              October 16, 2012 at 10:49 pm

              … oh nice, you broke comments too?
              I just wrote 3 paragraph reply, clicked submit and got back “enter name and email”. Site stopped remembering me, Clicking back ate my post.

              So yeah, I replied to you but dog ate it :/

              • rasz says

                October 16, 2012 at 10:51 pm

                checked again and yes, site doesnt remember name and email.

                Lol, you moved this www back to 1996, Geocities days. All we need now is some animated gifs, blink tags and ‘under construction’ jpg.

  3. Alan Wolke W2AEW says

    October 15, 2012 at 10:45 am

    Thanks so much for having me on, it was great fun. I should mention that the old Camp Evans site is not owned and operated by a non-profit consortium called Infoage (http://www.infoage.org), that is doing a fantastic job of preserving the history of the site, including many exhibits, etc. that feature everything from early Signal Corp Radar work, to the history of radio and television, to early computing equipment, and a lot more. A great place to visit.

  4. HAL-42B says

    October 15, 2012 at 11:45 am

    Hello Alan

    Thank you for the many scope videos and glad to hear you here as well!

  5. Wardy says

    October 15, 2012 at 4:00 pm

    Today’s broadcast was magic.

    I found Alan’s anecdotes and opinions very interesting and fun to hear, struck a few chords with my own experiences too, even though I’m still a newbie to electronics. I’ve been watching some of Alan’s youtube stuff just now as well – it makes me want to run out and buy a Tek 485 scope – no matter what the pricetag!

    Listening to it helped me through the final exciting stages of a PCB routing job. 100% routed. Now it’s just the blasted test points. *groan*.

    Monkey fingers!

  6. Alex says

    October 15, 2012 at 6:17 pm

    Nice episode guys!

    It was interesting hearing Alan’s varied stories. It sure made FAE stuff sound appealing as a possible future career direction, haha. 🙂

  7. TerminalJack says

    October 15, 2012 at 10:58 pm

    Good show. Your videos are great, Alan.

    I have a 2467 scope too. It would be ashamed of its owner if it saw your videos. I see your 2467 scope in your videos and I think to myself “I wish I knew half of what that guy knows about it.”

  8. bob says

    October 15, 2012 at 11:44 pm

    I like it

  9. masterburner says

    October 16, 2012 at 7:44 am

    Alan should be on the amp hour more often! 🙂 It was fun listening to you, Alan. You should become a regular, just like Jeff.
    I also love his videos. They’re very educational, I have even learned a thing or 2 from some of them. And of course all that lovely gear…. *drool*

  10. Multivac says

    October 16, 2012 at 9:26 am

    Alan, I’ve said this before but i think your videos are great. you have a really nice way of explaining things, thank you!
    the episode was great, thanks guys.

  11. Matt Hoskins says

    October 17, 2012 at 9:12 pm

    Chris&Dave, Yet another really good one. And an NJIT Alum! (I work there) Great conversation.

  12. Alan Wolke W2AEW says

    October 19, 2012 at 3:16 pm

    True to form – I listened to the podcast and noted a couple of errors in what I said. The primary researcher behind Project Diana was Walter McAfee, not Robert. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_McAfee Also, the camera I use for my videos is a Canon Powershot SX130IS (not a 110). Whew – I feel better now…

  13. Charlie says

    October 29, 2012 at 11:17 pm

    And another great show!
    Thnks, CHexclaim

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