...Sorry, still no pix yet but perhaps later; the Brownsburg hamfest remains small-but-good (and I passed up a nice old Radio Shack desktop general-coverage receiver; maybe I should not have but I do kinda own a lot of radio receivers). Picked up some interesting books, some hex-shank drills (a luxury!) and a super-duper-powerful magnetic hex bit holder. Books from my favorite vendor, who had a custom-made full-auto Morse key set up. Naturally I gave it a try, as it's not a real hamfest without occasional bursts of code. My electronic-key sending is suboptimal, but still -- one must.
Over in Lawrence, the IHRS meet had an exhibit of crystal sets and a busy swap/sell area; I bought some old radio magazines, a nice battery-operated 24-hour analog clock (secondary time reference for my basement ham shack -- a problem with using very old, AC-run clocks is I don't like to leave them plugged in and WWV is not always easily receivable) and.... Can't go to a swapmeet without buying something off-topic! A tiny X-acto plane was offered for $2.00, American, and of course I bought it. (They seem to get mixed reviews -- this is an older one, often a good sign. Plus, a plane is a little skill-dependent and a lot sharpening-skill-dependent, so there's no way to know without using it.)
It never rains but it pours: two interesting radio events not merely the same day but both running for only four or five hours. I went high-tailing across the full width of Marion County and while it's not one of those state-sized Out West counties, we're not Georgia, either. It's well more than a half-day's horseback ride across.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
4 comments:
I must have missed you in Brownsburg. I left there about 10. Didn't see anything I couldn't live without.
If you passed a DX120 no loss, a 160 is a find.
Either is a good fun radio but the DX160 is better and more stable.
I have both and a AX180, a nice solid state dual conversion hambands plus 15MHZ and 11M radio. Makes a fairly usable SSB/CW radio even in current band use. Not bad for 1973 design.
I do the New England ham fleas as that's where I roam.
Eck!
I've wondered if it's possible to build a crystal computer by analogy to a crystal radio.
Not and keep it running for very long - the first FET (IIRC) was a crystal-radio-era discovery that didn't go anywhere for a couple of generations. "Point-contact" transistors sometimes showed up but they were flukey, unstable things; you'd never get enough of them running at the same time for a superhet receiver, let alone a useful logic gate -- and you'd need millions of gates to build a CPU. (And one more Gates, I suppose, to sell you an operating system).
You'd be better off with clockwork -- and a very large building in which to keep it. It's been done, at least for a machine that prints log tables; like the Arthur C. Clarke analog in Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" you'd need to keep an oil can at ready and to be ever on the lookout for excessive lash in the gear trains
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