NSW Home brew meeting at dural

We gathered at the WIA Dural site today for a show and tell and a talk on recovering components from PCBs.

The construction of the new shed is progressing well.



Contrary to my first guess, that isn't the roof on top of the slab, it's the walls.

There was the usual bits and pieces of interesting junk to pick through.



John has built a brilliant 3 transistor high gain audio amplifier that can drive headphones from small signals such as those from a direct conversion mixer.



Kevin showed a helical antenna he built for a Telstra wireless broadband setup on the edge of coverage.



John also showed a loop antenna for 40 and 80m built in a hula hoop.



The main presentation by Mark went through all the normally expensive or hard to obtain components that can be found for free in discarded circuit boards.



Mark had lots of practical tips of getting components off boards with plumbers soldering irons, gas jets, and heat guns. It's not a subtle art.

Update

Alan, VK2ZAY has a nice writeup too.