Sunday, May 30, 2010

Amateur Radio NSW Home Brew meeting at Dural

Another great meeting out at the WIA shed at Dural today. Stephen VK2BLK has been busy mixing integrated circuits and valves:

Stephen.jpg

His shortwave radio is really beautiful and has enough dial lighting for the whole room:

Receiver.jpg

At first I thought Brian VK2TOX had built a home brew pacemaker but it turns out to be an electrical treatment for back pain:

Brian.jpg

We had "show and tell" where I showed my "Retro-75" AM transceiver, but the main presentation was by Mark VK2XOF on circuit simulation with LTspice.

spice.jpg

Watching the demo was a great help and I look forward to playing around with this software in the future. The day was well attended.

viewers.jpg

Despite some worries about the weather turning bad.

viewers2.jpg

The new shed makes it all much more comfortable than the old days. Thanks to everyone who organised this, the hot dogs were great and there was even a home brew electric car on display.

I came away with a Wagner 1729 HF radio at a very good price ($10).

Update: An excellent video by dx2hunt who left a comment:



Here he is shooting part of it:

video guy.jpg
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:11 PM

    Hi Peter,
    was a great day.
    There is a video of some of it at youtube user "dx2hunt".

    Cheers es 73s .

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peter Marks6:29 PM

    Love the video, I have a photo of you at one point during the filming. Hope you don't mind that I've embedded it in the item?

    73s

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alan Yates9:53 PM

    Looks like I missed a good meeting!

    LTSpice is extremely handy, I've been using it on my commute to design things to play with on the weekends. You can end up simulating more than building, which I find a dangerous trap to fall into, and some device physics (like break-down voltages) aren't simulated with the default models, but on the whole it can save you a lot of frustration at the bench pursuing things that will never work properly. I find it especially useful for checking filter and amplifier designs, but you can simulate difficult things like oscillators quite successfully.

    Thanks to dx2hunt for the great video.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tulsa Chiropractor11:31 AM

    Wow, my Grandpa who passed away 1 year ago would love you guys. Not that I'm saying you're old, it's just that he was a HAM radio operator for years, and was tinkering with inventions till his last days. Thanks for the great post!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Peter Marks11:50 AM

    Sorry to hear about Grandpa. There's a few of them who come to meetings though. Gives me hope for my twilight years.

    ReplyDelete