NY State Portable

Today was a nice sunny day with the weather man calling for a high temperature of 45 F, I decided to spend the afternoon outside and explore a new place to set up a station. After kicking around a few places I settled on Harriman State Park in New York over the New Jersey border.
I went camping and fishing in the past at Harriman and know of a very nice overlook with a great view of the surroundings. Plus with the cold winter months no bears or snakes to meet up with, just deer and they are always nice to look at.  The equipment was on the heavy side but with the help of my backpack the short hike from the car was no big deal, just had to be careful crossing the small stream, wet feet on a cold day would have me back in the car super fast. The temps ended up at 40 F mark and the lake in the distance had a covering of ice.

Time to unpack

Equipment List:
FT-857D
Buddipole
Weaker battery
MFJ-259B (lowest SWR for the Buddipole)
Water & snacks (muffins)
Pad, pencil, & camera

BuddiPole Antenna

Ft-857D & Accessories

Only two contacts were made, a Northern Ireland station, 2I0BSA came back to my cq call and also WB8QEY from TN, both on the SSB side. My battery was not fully charged when I left so it did not last long. I tried for one more station in England but he said I was coming over at a S1 and very weak on his end. Decided to start packing up after an hour or so when the winds started to pick up.  Only two contacts but was very nice to get outside.

I can't wait to do it again.

Great View!

Education Links #1

Wonderful list of links with something for everyone courtesy of Google Plus.

CONTENTS:

I. Top Picks
II. Universities and Higher Education
III. General Collections
IV. How-to & DIY
V. Studying with Peers
VI. Online Books, eBooks, & Journals
VII. Computers, Software, & Programming
VIII. Science & Math

I. TOP PICKS
Khan Academy
http://www.khanacademy.org/

Academic Earth - Online courses from the world's top scholars
http://academicearth.org/

TED - Technology, Entertainment, & Design
http://www.ted.com/

MIT Open CourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

Stanford Engineering Everywhere
http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

Open Yale Courses
http://oyc.yale.edu/

About U. - Collection of free online courses from About.com
http://u.about.com/

Wikiversity
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page

YouTube EDU
http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

The Open University - Study at the OU
http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

University of the People
www.uopeople.org

University of Reddit
http://ureddit.com/

Open Culture - The best free cultural & educational media on the web
http://openculture.com/

VideoLectures - Exchange ideas & share knowledge
http://videolectures.net/

CosmoLearning - Free educational website with thousands of courses & documentaries
http://www.cosmolearning.com/

II. UNIVERSITIES & HIGHER EDUCATIONLecture Fox - Free university lectures
http://lecturefox.com/

More Open Courses:
Open Courseware Consortium
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/

Harvard Extension School - Computer Science & Technology
http://computerscience1.tv/2010/spring/

Johns Hopkins University
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/

Kaplan University
http://ocw.kaplan.edu/

Notre Dame
http://ocw.nd.edu/

Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study
http://video.ias.edu/all

Tufts
http://ocw.tufts.edu/

Utah State
http://ocw.usu.edu/

Google in Education
http://www.google.com/edu/index.html

ArsDigita University - Computer science and math lectures
http://aduni.org/courses/

UC Berkeley Webcast - Central service for online video & audio for learners around the globe
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/

UC Berkeley Video Courses - Free education online
http://education.jimmyr.com/

Capilano University
http://ocw.capilanou.ca/

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/

Delft University of Technology
http://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/

Rice University Connexions - A place to view and share educational modules
http://cnx.org/

Stanford on iTunes U - Stanford-related digital audio content
http://itunes.stanford.edu/content/overview.html

UC Irvine
http://ocw.uci.edu/

UC San Diego Podcasts
http://podcast.ucsd.edu/

University of Chicago's Mind Online - Thought-provoking samples of critical thinking & debate
http://news.uchicago.edu/multimedia

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
http://www.uccs.edu/~math/vidarchive.html

University of Massachusetts
http://ocw.umb.edu/

University of Michigan
http://open.umich.edu/education

University of Southern Queensland
http://ocw.usq.edu.au/

University of Sydney - Podcast episodes
http://sydney.edu.au/podcasts/2011.php

University of Virginia - Podcasts & webcasts
http://www.virginia.edu/uvapodcast/

University of Washington - Computer Science & Engineering
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/course-webs.html

Utah Valley University - Online courses & open educational resources
http://open.uvu.edu/

YouTube Channels:
Stanford
http://www.youtube.com/stanford

UC Berkeley
http://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley

University of New South Wales
http://www.youtube.com/user/UNSWelearning

Yale
http://www.youtube.com/yalecourses

III. GENERAL COLLECTIONSFree Video Lectures - 800+ Online Courses and 19,000+ Videos from Top 30+ Universities on 35+ Categories
http://freevideolectures.com/

100 Intro Open Courses on Everything You've Ever Wanted to Learn
http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2010/05/12/100-intro-open-courses-on-everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-learn/

Annotum (formerly Google's Knol)
http://annotum.org/

IncrediCampus - Lectures and preparation/admission advice for college & graduate schools
http://www.incredicampus.com/

Learners TV - Thousands of downloadable video lectures on liberal arts, science, engineering, and more
http://www.learnerstv.com/

Online Education Database - 200 free online classes to learn anything
http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/200-free-online-classes-to-learn-anything

Infoplease - All the knowledge you need
http://www.infoplease.com/

MERLOT - Multimedia educational resource for learning and online teaching
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/

101 Online Self-improvement Resources
http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/101-self-improvement-resources/

IV. HOW-TO & DIYWikiHow - The how-to manual that you can edit
http://www.wikihow.com/

How Stuff Works
http://www.howstuffworks.com/

Wonder How To
http://www.wonderhowto.com/categories/

Instructables
http://www.instructables.com/

Make Magazine
http://www.makezine.com/

How-to Help & Videos for Dummies
http://www.dummies.com/

VideoJug - Get good at life
http://www.videojug.com/

How to Create a Book in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books

Let's Make Robots
http://letsmakerobots.com/

V. STUDYING with PEERS
Open Study - Study together
http://openstudy.com/

P2P University - Learn anything with your peers
http://p2pu.org/en/

Study Blue - Your digital backpack
http://www.studyblue.com/
VI. ONLINE BOOKS, eBOOKS, & JOURNALSGoogle Books
http://books.google.com/

WikiBooks - Open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Planet eBook - Home of free classic literature
http://www.planetebook.com/about.asp

Open Book Project
http://openbookproject.net/

The Free Library
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/

Many Books - Ad-free eBooks
http://www.manybooks.net/

WorldCat - Collections & services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide
http://www.worldcat.org/

iBiblio - The public's library and digital archive
http://www.ibiblio.org/

LibriVox - Free public domain audiobooks
http://librivox.org/

The Assayer - Web's largest catalog of books whose authors have made them available for free
http://theassayer.org/

Amazon.com Free eBook Collection
http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_85650291_15?ie=UTF8&node=2245146011

Scribd - Reading and publishing evolved
http://www.scribd.com/

Textbook Revolution - Student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials
http://www.textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Main_Page

Directory of Open Access Journals
http://www.doaj.org/

eReaderIQ - Recent non-public domain freebies & price-drop alerts
http://www.ereaderiq.com/

Longform - New and classic non-fiction articles curated across the web
http://longform.org/

Flatworld Knowledge - The first and largest publisher of free & open textbooks
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/

VII. COMPUTERS, SOFTWARE, & PROGRAMMINGW3Schools - The world's largest web development site
http://www.w3schools.com/

Google Code University
http://code.google.com/edu/

The New Boston - Step-by-step tutorials for multiple coding languages
http://thenewboston.org/

UDacity - CS 101
http://www.udacity.com/

PHP Academy
http://www.youtube.com/user/phpacademy

Better PHP
http://www.youtube.com/betterphp

NetTuts+ - A large collection of coding tutorials
http://nettuts.com/

Tutorial Guide - The site for all your tutorial needs
http://www.tutorialguide.net/

Codecademy - Fun & interactive way to learn how to code
http://www.codecademy.com/

Free Technology Academy - High quality educational material based on free software & open standards
http://ftacademy.org/

Higher Computing for Everyone - Writing basic programs
http://www.highercomputingforeveryone.com/

HTML 5 Please
http://html5please.us/

Rails for Zombies
http://railsforzombies.org/

Ruby Warrior - Open source game to teach Ruby language
http://www.trybloc.com/courses/ruby-warrior/chapters/beginner#/1

Got API - Documentation search engine
http://start.gotapi.com/

Lynda - Online software training videos
http://www.lynda.com/

Intro to Linux
http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/bbnkp/ive_tinkered_in_ubuntu_before_but_its_the_primary/c0lzpwk

Stack Overflow - Q&A for professional and enthusiast programmers
http://stackoverflow.com/

DZone - Fresh links for developers
http://www.dzone.com/links/index.html

Photoshop & Graphics:Tutorial Hero - Photoshop & Flash tutorials
http://www.tutorialhero.com/

PSD Tuts+
http://psd.tutsplus.com/

Photoshop Tutorials
http://photoshoptutorials.ws/

Graphic Tutorials
http://www.graphictutorials.net/

Photoshop Pack Graphic Design Resources
http://www.photoshop-pack.com/

PSD FanExtra Tutorials
http://psd.fanextra.com/category/tutorials/

Vandelay Design - Photoshop Tutorial Hall of Fame
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-tutorial-tutorials/

Grokking the GIMP
http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/index.html

Video CoPilot - Tutorials for VFx & motion graphics
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/

VIII. SCIENCE & MATHScirus - The most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web
http://www.scirus.com/

Cite Seer X - Access scientific and scholarly knowledge
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/

getCited - Academic database, directory, & discussion forum
http://www.getcited.org/

National Science Digital Library - Explore, share, create
http://nsdl.org/

Science Magazine Podcasts
http://www.sciencemag.org/multimedia/podcast/

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning - Science, Engineering, & Technology
http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/

KQED's Quest - Explore science, nature, and environment stories from Northern California and beyond
http://science.kqed.org/quest/

Freelance Teacher - Videos on physics, chemistry, math, & biology
http://www.freelance-teacher.com/videos.htm

FHSST - Free high school science texts in physical sciences & math
http://fhsst.org/

cK-12 Flexbooks
http://www.ck12.org/flexbook/

Paul's Online Math Notes
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/

Reddit's List of Useful Online Math Resources
http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/bqbex/lets_list_all_the_useful_free_online_math/

Math, Better Explained
http://betterexplained.com/

Astronomy & Outerspace:Space Engine - Free space simulation software
http://en.spaceengine.org/

Google Sky
http://www.google.com/sky/

NASA for Students
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/index.html

Scale of the Universe - Interactive Flash Animation
http://www.scaleoftheuniverse.com/

Statistics:Vassar Stats - Concepts and applications of inferential statistics
http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/webtext.html

StatSoft Electronic Statistics Textbook
http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html

Connexions Collaborative Statistics
http://cnx.org/content/col10522/latest/

Handbook of Biological Statistics
http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/statintro.html

Miniatur Wunderland

Check out this amazing video featuring the worlds largest model railway.

In person this must be very cool.

SMT Training Course

Finished kit with cover over PC board.

Just finished up the Elenco Surface Mount Technology Training Course Kit, part number SM-200K. This was my first experience soldering a kit with just surface mount components, turned into an interesting process.

The finished kit is called a Decision Maker, by pushing a switch six LED's blink in sequence and a buzzer sounds until one LED remains on.

Theory of Operation:

6 LED's are driven by a decimal counter and two oscillators. One oscillator drives the decimal counter and the other drives a buzzer. Two timers control the counter and the oscillators. The decade counter IC 4017 is a 5 stage divide by 10 counter. This IC has 10 outputs and one clear input. Only one out of ten outputs are high, the other nine are low. Every time a pulse is fed to the clock input, output 1 will go low and output 2 will go high. Each clock pulse will move the output one position. When an LED is connected the the output, it will light when output is high. When clock is on LED's flash ON and OFF with the speed on the clock. When the clock stops only one LED remains lit.

This kit uses two oscillators, one produces a frequency of about 200 hertz, and the other is about 20 hertz.The 4011 IC contains four two input NAND gates. Two of these NAND gates are needed to form an oscillator. Both ICs act as inverters, when input is low, output is high. One oscillator controls LED's depending on if pin 1 is high the circuit will oscillate, when pin 1 is brought low, the circuit stops oscillating. The second oscillator produces the buzzer sound.

Parts List:
8 resistors, 4 capacitors, 2 diodes and IC's, 6 LED's,
PC board, buzzer, switch, battery snap.

Construction Notes:

• Use plenty of lighting, these SMT devices are super small, TINY.
• I also use a magnifier light with arm attachment to my desk.
• One device is lined up over pads use clear tape to hold one side down, this make these devices super easy to solder. Never thought I would say that with surface mount.
• Kit includes four resistors and a spot on board to place them on for practice.
• Small soldering iron tip is helpful.
• Funny the time is took me to line up the small devices compaired to your standard leaded parts.
• Ultra short capacitor leads, no clipping with this kit!
• Lay off the pre-building coffee drink, steady hands help here.



PC board with components mounted.

Smoke Test:

The LED's lit up the first time but no sound from the buzzer. I double checked both IC's and notice one lead did not have a solid connection to PC board, resoldered and buzzer sounded perfect.

This is a good kit to get your feet wet and build confidence working with surface mount devices.

X-Wing Fighter Jet

This is a must build when things get tough at the office and you have to go into battle.

http://www.instructables.com/id/X-Wing-Fighter-from-Office-Supplies/

Or better yet keep one in the shack just in case someone tries messing with your on air contacts. This stealth jet will be sure to take out their dipole!

Basics: Zener Diode

Here is a very nice intro about Zener Diodes.

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/zeners

Simple easy to follow.

Future Stuff

Now that all the holiday running around is over my attention turns to the new year and getting settled in for the cold winter months ahead, heating up the soldering iron on component leads and PC boards.

Winter is the perfect time for building kits and playing around with components especially when the freezing temps and bone chilling winds are blowing outside. I have a few kit ideas on deck to break in 2012.

Plus this year I want to find the time for more operating from the great outdoors whether its sitting in the car somewhere memorable or walking in the woods. It's always fun when your out of your normal element, certain changes are needed on the fly. This time of the year the local parks are empty, less hassle and questions. Operating out of the car is simple, find a cool spot with a view, just slap a ham stick on the roof and your good to go. Very easy and lots of fun.

Yesterday turned out to be a lazy day watching an all time classic on WPIX channel 11, The Honeymooner's marathon. Nothing beats new years day with Jackie Gleason on the tube.