03 August 2008
His Dark Materials....
I expect you thought 'What's he on about now?' when you saw the title. I just had to tell you about a series of books I've just read (well listened to actually - audio books) by Philip Pullman. It's probably old hat for you as they've been around for some years now. I found them... Read More...
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14 January 2008
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?
I was just about to scream this out on the radio until I realised that I'd just spent an hour idly surfing the net just reading "stuff" - most of it amateur radio. So having done that I could hardly accuse anyone else of not using the radio! BUT, it would be rather nice if someone somewhere... Read More...
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12 November 2007
ESR meter - proof of the puddin' !
Just opened up my IC-R7000 which had been suffering intermittent display problems. Took me 5 minutes to isolate these little nasties, 2 of which were open circuit, and all the others very high resistance: Display now perfect - well pleased! Read More...
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11 November 2007
A Capacitor Equivalent Series Resistance Tester, and an introduction to making a PCB.
Well, about time I wrote an article, so here it is! An ESR meter is great for testing high (>1uF) value capacitors in circuit. Testing with a standard DVM is unreliable and you often end up de-soldering the cap just to find it was OK after all. This won't completely replace all your testing methods... Read More...
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23 October 2007
Linear Amp UK - 2m Discovery (Mk1) linear rebuild
Everyone must have heard me groaning on about this for the last few months! The club was unfortunate enough to buy this amp for a large sum when it first came out, and judging by the electronics/mechanical construction it looks like it was probably the first off the production line. It was based on a... Read More...
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24 July 2007
A double 'L' match balanced ATU
I've been hoping for a long time to build a reasonably high power balanced ATU from scratch, and at last managed to pick up a lovely matched pair of roller-coaster inductors at Newbury Rally. They came out of a military auto ATU, and cost £20! I wanted a balanced ATU to match my 128' doublet... Read More...
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21 July 2007
Kenpro KR-400C Rotator Controller
I bought a Kenpro rotator at the Reading rally and found that on testing everything worked, except the dial didn't go round! Grumble moan, loads of googling - found an article by G8MNY about the same problem - the small spur gear on the motor shaft had cracked along its length, causing it to jam... Read More...
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06 May 2007
QRO? That'll b-u-r-n nicely Sir!
As some of you may know, I recently acquired an HF linear and needless to say I've been putting it through its paces recently! I have a doublet antenna and use an MFJ-974H balanced tuner. The problem came when the other morning I tried to tune up on 80m, and at 100W there was a lot of fizzin' and poppin... Read More...
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10 April 2007
Learning The Morse Code...
My interest in CW has been re-kindled due to the current club 'worked all Europe' competition. There are lots of stations out there working high-speed (to me!) morse at around 30wpm, most of them using computers. So I tried it out and found that a whole new world of working DX stations opened up - not... Read More...
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10 March 2007
A brief intro to using this site (for members)
Once you've registered, I need to verify you are a member and then set up your 'account'. I am not automatically emailed when you register so please email me or pm me from the forum to let me know. Once I've done this, you are emailed automatically. To get in to post something: 1. Log in 2. Select 'Control... Read More...
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