Adventures in electronics

[keristor]

Comments

[rinioth]

Cool, so are you doing both sets of practicals together?

Any thoughts on getting a rig yet?

[keristor]

I may be, we'll probably see how the time goes. He's asked my to bring the kit along (and of course now I'm back up here without a soldering iron I've noticed some, er, "less than perfect" joints I hadn't noticed before).

At the moment (or rather when I have a licence) I'll be looking for something mobile, as I rather doubt that my landlady up here will be keen on my stringing bits of wire about *g*.

I expect I'll be speaking to you sometime this afternoon...

[rinioth]

Was nice to chat on the air. The most common rig for new amateurs these days seems to be an FT-817. HF through to 70cms multi-mode, and with internal batteries for portable use. With the supplied rubber-duck antenna you will easily be able to work the local repeaters and with the addition of an antenna for the car it works well mobile (although the control head isn't detachable so mounting it in the car can be difficult). Only 5 watts out but it's surprising what you can do with that.

[keristor]

I like his FT1000MP -- WANT! It's usually computer controlled (RS232 interface, and apparently the spec. is available so writing a Linux driver would be easy). Not exactly 'portable' though *g*.

You would have been bending our meter needle (if it had one) with your 10 watts, at S9+60. OK, that's not exactly DX, but it's indicative.

(BTW, I passed both practicals, and Martin reckons we should be able to do both exams on the same day, Tuesday Jan 18 evening. There's only one other person so far taking the Foundation exam, and he's an engineering student so should sail through it leaving plenty of time for the Intermediate.)

[hitchhiker]

nice :) i miss electronics sometimes

[hrrunka]

Looks about right. :)

[madfilkentist]

I once had a plain analog oscilloscope. Right next to the stone knives.

[keristor]

I still have one of those as well, it was going to be my backup if the Tektronics wasn't working (since neither had been powered on for at least a decade it was a hope that at least one would work). For AF stuff it doesn't need much bandwidth or resolution.

[keristor]

And in fact the one they had at the shack was a plain analog scope, which worked much better after he performed percussive maintenance on it *g*.