Experimental Post

Please ignore this as I’m sure you were going to anyway.

6 comments June 27th, 2006

High above the world we can dream.

Woke up this morning and felt the urge to get out in the open, so trekked off to the top of the downs and had a good old wander around and cleared my mind. Found a good position to build my house about 400feet above Willingdon, just need to get onto the council for planning permission and be prepared for an answer along the lines of “You’re ‘aving a larf! Now Sod Off You Time Wasting Twonk!” But hey we can all dream… I had noticed that throughout my walkabout on the downs a single Magpie was always in front of me, strange I thought. I usually have a lone Magpie in my face before a particularly distressing event, so when I got back to the car park I notice an official looking dude in a hi-vis jacket wandering around, and yes I had a parking ticket! So that poxy Magpie was telling me, har har, you’re now £60 worse off! I should of stamped on its head…

Chain invited me for a cuppa tea which was very well received, had a play with my pocket PC before heading home…

Recently I bought a 70cm hand-held radio and, to put it bluntly, it’s a bit crap, thought I’d put my technical abilities into use to improve the radio’s performance and set about armed with sodering irons, DVM’s, Scopes and tea. A little dissapointed, managed to get rid of an annoying tone that played everytime you turned it on, had to drill a hole in the front of the case for the microphone element. Not sure why the manufacturers didnt do it? Maybe they thought it’s such a crappy radio that whoever buys one will probably never use it so why bother. The next thing was to improve the audio quality, it sounded rather muffled, half due to the lack of passage for sound through the case to the mic, the other half I believe to be bad pre-amp design. Modestly adjusting the filtering for the mic pre-amp made a slight difference, the next stage was to find out where the background noise was being generated. This apparently, after reading forums and reviews, is characteristic of this radio. Got as far as proving it wasnt the mic pre-amp stage causing the noise, more likely the problem lies within the design of the RF stages and will be impossible to eliminate. So all in all, The JingTong UHF FM Tranceiver is quite naff, but it looks nice. Having reassembled it it seems a new noise has popped up, and I couldnt be bothered to rip it apart again. Another day, thanks to Chain btw for patiently monitoring 70cms while I tried several mods on the radio.

6 comments April 15th, 2006

Coaxial Matching RULEZ!

Off to Chains for a serious go at this antenna design that has been frustrating us for a while. Positive results too, seems inserting the bare antenna in a plastic tube has a remarkable affect on the performance… So we tried an Idea that Chain had to use a better design for the matching part of the aerial using coax instead of twin feeder, this proved an enormous success in respect that the plastic tube had no influence on the performance and the specifications using the 70cm (430-440mhz) band were flawless. However, the 2 meter performance had somehow depreciated…Though acceptable, we both felt this problem could be overcome and improved. Unfortunately I had to nip off to fetch my Daughter who was at a birthday party and the experimentation which I was really getting into, was cut off. Also Angel (hi hun) had come back with some very tempting looking fresh mackeral and seemed dissapointed I had to leave..(sorry 🙁 )

My dad won £50 on the grand national at the local pub sweepstake and insisted I join him for a beer…

Not alot else really…

2 comments April 9th, 2006

Uneventful Venture into the Land of Nowhere.

Funny day, though I’m certainly not laughing. Actually got the TVI filter working today, seems the first design I applied would’ve worked but the antenna amp had a broken track on the supply rail to the first stage and therefore, wasn’t amplifying! Quite frustrating as all the effort I put in yesterday was pointless, but this fault explains the lot, so now I can merrily transmit at full power on 145Mhz with not a zilch of interference on the TV downstairs 😉 Job Done!

Erm thats about it, had a couple of zany ideas with Chain about a fun business venture and a bit of pratting around with a DVC looks immenent… Felt a bit down in the evening, jus paced around like a div in a trance. More fun tomorrow me expects!

1 comment March 23rd, 2006

In Limbo

Had a letter today from Servowarm asking me if I was still up for starting work for them, but I still haven’t heard from another company that I think I’d prefer to work for…? I spoke to the area manager of Servowarm Monday and explained I had a problem with my voicemail and hadn’t received any of the 5 messages that had been left previous. Thing is I don’t really want to do anything plumbing related, I just want a large sum of money, basically for doing whatever I want. Still I will go with the flow for a bit longer and make my decision when the time is right.

Today I extensively tested alot of filtering modifications to the TV antenna pre-amp to try to avoid the interference I’m causing to the television and actually got it to work, one problem though is that the analogue signal became somewhat attenuated…Acheived very little to erradicate the insertion losses cause by the mods and gave up after about 5 hours. Chain came round and we fitted the aerial mount to his van and after walking around a major Industrial Estate looking very suspicious delivering leaflets, drove up to Butts Brow aprox. 350 feet above Eastbourne to flick around on the radio. Heard one or two stations on HF, though we decided that maybe there was a grounding problem preventing the antenna system from operating correctly. That’s about my lot for today, you sound a bit boring I here you say? I say, never judge a man before walking a mile in his shoes! Today I was quite contented, and my shoes stink a bit so I wouldn’t recommend borrowing them.

1 comment March 22nd, 2006

Day 3

The thing is this: I have often wondered about the reasons for my existance on this planet… And obviously have come up with no answers! Otherwise I would be locked up in some theatrical way of living that seems to suit the people I have the pleasure of being associated with along the way. My unfortunate circumstance places me in a position where I’m not really sure what I should be. I am free spirited, take things as they come and materialism to me is a myth. Life is an act that I see portraited by many people with varying ideas and influences, but the the thing is, who is the director?

Other things today well…Got the necessary components to complete my theoretical filter (thanks Chain). Didn’t really produce the goods, more analysing and research into the complicated mathematics of inductance and filtering made my head spin for a while after mastering bugger all…I went down the pub! 4 pints later and not really worrying about the complications that had before hand had a major impact on my frontal lobes…I feel somehow more at ease about the subject. I can’t remember!

Good day anyway, many cups of tea, and a few beers to boot!… 🙂

2 comments March 22nd, 2006