Amateur Radio Homebrew (Shack Culture)

[PanBiker]

Talking of older stock. I am currently in the process of re-purposing a 10ft length of 1.5" aluminium masting. It has been residing up the side of my kitchen for about 34 years! I want to use it as a more substantial mount for my portable antennas than the fibreglass landing net handle. I dragged it out from it's hiding place and it was quite apparent that it wasn't quite straight. It was bent slightly at the point where it was bracketed to the chimney stack when it was last deployed. Overtightened by the rigger that last put it up no doubt, (not me gov!). Anyway, the bend was only about 2ft in to one end so it was easier just to saw it off and reduce the length a little. I prised off the end cap from the length that I cut off and refitted it to the good section. It's 8ft now so a good 2ft longer than the landing net handle. I will have to make a new mount and U-bolt for the antenna to suite the larger diameter mast and alter the spacings on the HB9CV antenna boom to suit. It will then need a set of guys making unless I can utilise the ones I have. I may have cut them long enough which will be a bonus, I'll check using Mr Pythagoras. I will need some form of guy retention that will allow rotation. I will probably up-scale the same solution I used for the fibreglass mast. I gave it a quick rub down to get most of the muck off it. Just need the other bits and bobs now.

[Stanley]

You know where I am if you need anything....

[PanBiker]

I made a new U bolt and seating bracket for the larger mast and drilled the antenna boom to suit last night. Test set up on the runt end that I sawed off and it's a good grip and holds to the horizontal. Just have to find the guy's now, I know they will be in a safe place but at the moment I don't know where that is!

[Stanley]

If you are short of material for the guys I have some light galvanised steel wire rope Ian that you are welcome to. I'd say it is ideal.....

[PanBiker]

Thanks Stanley but wire rope is a bit over the top for an 8ft mast. I have a 100m reel of Paracord and the guy tighteners to suit. Pythagoras tells me that my existing set will probably do, I will do a test setup to confirm.

[Stanley]

[PanBiker]

I cut out drilled and filed up a new perspex mount for the guys to suit the 1.5" mast. I am utilising my original guys but will check practically to see if my Pythagoras calculations are correct.



I have worked out a simple way of providing a guy stay platform using the KISS principle. Three or four linked cable ties. I tested it with small cable ties on a spare bit of mast I used for sizing the guy hub. Simple and practical and will allow rotation of the mast through the guy hub. On the longer mast I will use much larger cable ties to create the platform then put another singe directly below to help in keeping it stable.



It should be fine as I am not deploying massive antennas.

[PanBiker]

I have just checked the length of the guys and they are OK. I have offered the mast up to the roof bars as well and transportation won't be a problem with a couple of bungee cords. I already have stock of those from years of packing stuff on the motorbikes. So all looking good for the next portable outing which will be on the Cumbrian coast. I will have the dual band transceiver in the car and I will take my 1W Standard C58 and the HB9CV Antenna for SSB working. See if I can raise anyone on the Galloway coast, IOM or over in Ireland on low power.

[PanBiker]

Not posted in here for a while.

I have been playing with my mobile microphone set up that I put together during lockdown. Never got round to deploying it in the car though so I thought I would give it a second look. I found my original electret tie clip microphone that I used when I last had hands free in my works estate car at the time. It was handy as It just clipped to the sun visor and worked very well.

The main problem is finding somewhere convenient to mount a latching push button for the push to talk. There is a lovely latching switch in the driver door that is used to lock out the rear electric windows. Grandchildren are old enough now to take charge of their own windows without running the risk of jumping out which is what the switch is for. It was pointed out last night though when I was chatting on air that as a safety feature of the car electronics, disconnecting it to re-purpose it as PTT may well sent the cars ECU into fault reporting mode!

Another option is the steering wheel central horizontal spoke. The left spoke has the in car audio control switches for mode, volume and track skip etc. There is a corresponding blank area in the right hand spoke which on other models has stuff like cruise control and the like installed, not required in my model. Problem here is that the centre column of the steering wheel contains the main driver air bag and I don't want to be fiddling around with that! I have looked at a few yu tube videos and I think it requires removal of the steering wheel to get at the back of the blanking panel to remove it, scary. Why cant it just be a front accessed pop out blank? grrrr....

My original mobile installation was in a Ford Escort manual Estate. I used a T shift from a Jaguar automatic that I found in the scrap yard, I think it cost me all of £1 at the time. I bored out the right hand side of the T which would then accommodate a barrel style latching push button switch. I drilled and filed out a route for cable entry on the front face. No such luck there. My automatic has a bog standard chunky spherical shifter and an added problem of course is that you don't need to access the shifter under normal driving conditions unlike a manual transmission vehicle.

I am coming round to thinking maybe of an independent electronic solution to turn a momentary switch into a latching output. I could then use any style of momentary switch of which there are thousand to choose from, still have to find somewhere to put it though.

[PanBiker]

I have been looking at convenient places at th drivers side of the car to put a latching push switch for th PTT on my mobile transceiver. Not many options to be honest. There is room in the central column on the front face of the plastic surround for the automatic shifter, there is a small tray in front of that face and then the auxiliary power port and the cig lighter,, inbetween these two there is an audio input socket for the car stereo amplifier and a USB port for the same. Problem in getting to this though is that you have to take the whole of the cetral plastic column out to get proper access. There is another area on a pop out panel below the hand breaK, this looks ideal when the car is stopped, unfortunately when driving with the handbreak off it blanks the area off.

I think I have resolved to put the switch into a small plastic box. I can get these with integral side flanges for mounting. There is just space in the area just behind the transceiver which is mouted vertically on the side of the central column at about seat height and the front of the seat. I could mount the switch on the top side of the enclosure and just secure it the same way as the transceiver bracket with a couple of coarse self tapping screws with washers. That would place the switch easily accessible to my left hand at the front corner of the driver seat. It would also have the advantage of being easily removable with little damage to the car interior plastics.

[Stanley]

Be careful Ian! I remember once putting a tiny self tapper through the skin of a car and chose the exact spot where I could penetrate some wiring and shorted the whole of the wiring loom out. It's so easy to do!

[plaques]

Can you remember the old headlamp dipper switch which was on the floor and you actuated with your foot. Just a thought.

[PanBiker]

Be careful Ian! I remember once putting a tiny self tapper through the skin of a car and chose the exact spot where I could penetrate some wiring and shorted the whole of the wiring loom out. It's so easy to do!

The pop off panel I mentioned above near the handbrake is next to the area that I am thinking of fixing to. No wiring in that vicinity just a nice small open void. Not big enough to fit a switch in but a couple of short fixings should be fine.

[Stanley]

The last time I saw one of those was in the cab of a Bedford 5 ton wagon Ken.....

[PanBiker]

I have decided on a plan for the PTT switch for my mobile transceiver. To this end I ordered up the required extra bits.

Starting with this, a small flanged plastic case.



It has a screw on plastic back, flush with the flanges and four mounting holes.



Here is the latching push button switch which is double pole but I only need to use one pole. I drilled and filed out the required cut out on the long side of the box.



I poked this hole through for the cable gland but I don't think it is quite big enough.



I was right in my assumption of the hole size, I had to increase it two drill sizes up to get the gland to fit.



Cable in through the gland and then out through the cut out and soldered to one pole and the joints covered with heat shrink insulation.



Switch fitted with the soldered connections at the bottom to ensure the back seats properly. The box is is just large enough to accommodate the latching push button switch and the wiring.



The switch cable is terminated in a standard phono plug. I have fitted a phono in line socket on lead for the PTT line from the microphone control circuitry.

I plugged it all up with the transceiver and tested it and it works fine. I popped the back on and the whole kit and caboodle just needs reinstalling in the car. I am intending to attach it to the central console to the left of the transceiver just in front of the driver seat. A finished installation picture to follow.

[Stanley]

Tidy job as usual Ian.....

[PanBiker]

I have my original dual beam oscilloscope in my loft, bought over 35 years ago, it was about £500 at the time. It's CRT based for the dual beam green screen display and the tube is soft, so in unrecoverable out of focus, no good really to man nor beast without a new CRT. I doubt that particular component will still be available.

I miss having a scope on the bench as they are a very good piece of diagnostic kit. I have ordered a modern equivalent from AliExpress in China, they have loads of lovely electronic goodies. It's dual beam digital, 50M sampling and can also handle analogue waveforms, it will also handle up to 400v. I have ordered it with 2 probes one of which is for high power use, the other for lower power input. It has 10MHz analogue bandwidth and a host of other features such as single, normal or automatic trigger and a full AUTO feature that you can enable so that you can use without adjustments.

Microprocessor controlled of course, 3.2" full colour screen and built in rechargeable lithium battery. It comes with a bog standard USB charging cable and the probes as mentioned. Firmware can be updated. It costs me less than £20 including the shipping!

Its a lot smaller of course and would fit in a pocket but a lot more features than my old workhorse. Its a bit like the mobile computer you carry around in your pocket and sometimes use for phone calls

I am eyeing a similar priced modern signal generator which for diagnostics is used on the input side of circuits. You shove a known signal in and then monitor it through the circuit with the scope through to the output.

Modern electronic kit is fantastic. Largest original kit on the bench will be my Beckman digital meter.

[Tripps]

It costs me less than £20 including the shipping!

Good heavens - that's cheap by any standard. Not worth being without one.

I've just ordered a new desktop computer, as the current one is short of memory and is becoming a nuisance. It's five years old and owes me nothing - so I've gone for a small form factor (refurbished) one with 240GB of SSD memory, and 32GB of Ram. Amazingly it is only 7 inches square - so I'll get most of my desk back.

[PanBiker]

I used to build the micro cased PC's when I had my business, that form factor had just been introduced. They were very popular compared to standard desktops and tower cased PC's. Fully featured as well with built in SVGA interface and audio on the motherboard. All you had to add was the choice of drives, HD, CD. DVD etc and the amount of RAM you wanted to shove in. My business slightly pre dated the SSD drives.

Yes the price of modern test stuff is amazing. The scope is about the size of a paperback book. I'll shove a photo up when I have received it. Should be about a week. Most of the electronic stuff comes via air freight. I am also looking at the component sets they do. Crazy prices around the £2 mark for semiconductor, capacitor and resistor packs, all are a full range of common values and voltages, 800+ components typically with 10 of each value. Cant go wrong really and you can still get pre SMT axial and radial lead types.

I can get a full SMT rework station for about £30 but I don't think my eyes are up to that repair level now with most components only a few mm in size.

[Stanley]

Amazing price! What struck me was that today's equivalent of what you paid 35 years ago would be far more now. (Google AI response says around £1,800.)

[PanBiker]

My new bit of test kit has been packed and despatched, passed by the tax department and airport security and at 7.08 GMT today was awaiting a flight. Tracking says I should have it by the 6th of March.

[Stanley]

And that's from China.... Amazing speed!

[PanBiker]

Actual delivery date is the 6th to the 10th. Current tracking shows it in the UK and it has passed UK customs and been transferred to the courier for delivery.
I have ordered a signal generator to go with it, similar price, it can generate sine, square and sawtooth waveforms at a full range of frequencies and has lots of other features too numerous to mention. It will also function as a frequency counter. I have a couple of audio systems that need some attention, these bits of diagnostic kit should help.

[Stanley]

Sounds complicated.....
(pun intended....)

[PanBiker]

Here's an update on my delivery of the scope. It was shipped in mainland China via road to the tax folk then the customs office then the airport, onto a cargo plane and a flight to the UK. That bit only took a couple of days. On arrival in the UK it has passed customs and gone to the couriers hub they have been processing it for the last two days and it is now marked for delivery, not actual delivery but marked as such. I think that is why the Chinese gave the delivery as the 6th as they probably expected our logistics system to be as efficient as theirs. Anyway Evri have it now and their website says they will try three times to delivery it, when they get round to it!