Simpsons On Ham Radio

Fun video for a Monday!

An Eye On The Sky

The weather for the afternoon is not looking good for my afternoon back yard portable radio fun. The call is for heavy thunderstorms and a tornado warning for all of NJ until this evening.

I was going to set up the Buddipole and make a few contacts but kind of holding back now. Will make a decision soon because will only have an hour or so.

Photo is courtesy of Accuweather.

Enjoy your Sunday and I hope your weather is a bit nicer.

Online Parts Locator

If you want to visit one site to find your components and com pair prices here is a great site.

http://www.findchips.com/

Find Chips has a listing of a few major electronic components distributors, most will sell without a high order minimum dollar amount. Be careful with handling charges, some are very high.

Crystal Radio Fun

It was a very windy cold day in NJ for this time of year in May, spent most of the afternoon cleaning up the garage. This evening I broke out an old favorite kit built a few years ago with my kids, the crystal radio.

Crystal radios are fun to play with no matter how old you are. The kit listed above is the Elenco MX-901 Crystal Radio. Four local stations came in loud and clear into my earphone.

WABC, 770AM, Talk
WINS, 1010AM, News
WEPN, 1050AM, ESPN Sports
WBBR, 1130AM, Bloomberg

The hook up was very simple, antenna wire hung over curtain rod, ground wire to a plate on radiator. The key is a good solid ground, make sure your connection is not made against some metal that is painted.

I am going to keep it connected for another hour and maybe get lucky with a station or two out of the local area.

Sunspot Basics

The May 2010 CQ magazine has an easy to read article on sunspots. The sun plays such an important part in our on air activities. I sometimes do not pay enough attention to the sun and how it effects band conditions.

The write up also mentions NASA's new Solar Dynamics Observatory, that I posted a video of previously. Future photos and videos from the $858 million SDO satellite should be must see type of stuff.

CQ magazine is a nice simply down to earth easy read that the beginner can understand. I just wish they would put more kids on the cover, might help generate a younger crowd to the hobby.

Amazing Video of the Sun

Check out this video of sun surface activity from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.



The SDO was launched on Feb. 11, 2010, and is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun.

I have been reading about the band conditions and thorough would be of interest to a few.

Saturday Night Soldering

Fired up the soldering iron last night and put together the Velleman Super Stereo Ear kit# MK136.

The stereo audio amplifier boosts sound 50 times and looks like fun kit to mess around with. Kit consists of 30 or so components that are soldered on a screen PC board. Assembly is straight forward and easy. Total build time was 90 minutes at a slow pace.

The kit is built around part number NE5532, dual low-noise high speed audio operational amplifier 8 pin dip. Per Fairchild Semi data sheet: The high small signal and power bandwidth provides superior performance in high quality Amp, all control circuits, and telephone applications. Kit also includes two microphones and a 3 cell battery holder that gets attached to the board. Only items required is head phones and batteries. I used a pair of old Walkman type head phones I had.

Time for the smoke test, a flick of the slide switch and the small LED came to life and turned a nice color red. Now with headphones in place and a slight turn of the potentiometer and the sounds around me came to life in stereo.

I took the stereo ear outside in the dark but only heard a car go by. I will have to take this out during the day and see what kind of gossip comes across. Maybe even add two paper towel type tubes to each microphone to aim in the direct of sounds in a distance.

The price is about $9.00 from J-Tron, Inc.

Will post more updates with this kit in the future.