A Bit Wet.
It’s rained a bit so far this winter which makes me a little miserable at times, my mood does take a plunge this time of year until we get a dolloping of snow but that’s looking a little unlikely at the moment. Really taking a battering and just hope things improve soon. Not liking this new theme either, seems the HTML I’ve been using for 8 years doesn’t work with this! So I will need to see what I can do about that when I can be bothered, which will probably be never. Left the transmitter project on a window sill and it corroded slightly and didn’t work, so I cleaned it, masked off all the plastic and put it under the grill to reflow and it now works again, although a couple of coil formers and a jack socket melted 😛
Keep dreaming I am back working in electronics, totally tired of domestic heating, I am qualified to design purge and test industrial gas installations in pipe sizes up to 2 meters and here I am bleeding radiators and fixing poxy leaky boilers! Time soon for a change. Got my radios set up in the garage which bothers me a little as it gets cold and damp so I butchered a blow heater and wired part of the elements upto a 13.8V supply to make a demister, so now I sling a blanket over them and they keep nice and dry… Kinda miss having that spare room for my stuff, I need that space or I go mental, specially with some of the shit that the TV is tuned into most evenings!
Now I need to book a holiday… Or some holidays, get in there before all the otherS. Organising something to look forward too is sometimes a good idea, I don’t do a lot so this year I will do a bit more… I just rambling from one load of bollocks to another here so I’ll jog on.
1 comment January 7th, 2014
Getting a little disoriented what with work and work and trying to make a living, oh and did I mention work. I won’t spend my time here complaining about it, I hear enough of everybody else’s complaints from day to day. Let’s just say I could be put to better use, and I miss the technical aspects. There has been talk at home about a move to another part of the country and a fresh start, an idea 5 years ago I would have sneered at but now is actually looking like quite an attractive prospect. I don’t see things ever evolving where I am now and a step outside this comfort zone is most likely exactly what is required, I have a goal though the barriers seem endless, I know step by step is the way to go but I have always been a live in the moment person and find it difficult to perceive that I might have the capability to achieve something in the long term, of course I must mention my pessimism, mood changes and financial rut!
Transmitter power… Sourced a 2SC1971 VHF MOSFET and have a go at beefing this 100mW to about 5,000! The idea is simple, just stick it on the end with 4 Trimmers for tuning/matching and a few bits of 1mm lighting cable twisted to add some inductiveness! There’s always a bit of satisfaction in manipulating something from an electrical sphere and making it so much more interesting, lighting cable to make inductors or even with plumbing materials, a 15mm copper tube 2 meter JPole I built in 2005 is still up and running and out performs many other commercially produced aerials out there. 5 Watts may seem excessive for a transmitter to extend the audio from one room to another, but what the hell. It’s something to do and if it works I will be designing an antenna based on the highly successful JPole 😉 to resonate on 100 MHz, this should get me to Hastings from where I am (16 Miles). Slight legal issues might become apparent at this point but having driven around the chaotic London Town and been swamped with pirate radio stations left, right and center 😉 (ok the pun more appropriate for AM but hey) that bleed crap over a massive bandwidth and broadcasting day after day without intervention, I’m sure a QRP 20 minute broadcast on the south coast will not even be intercepted, or do you think differently? Of course I will have limited use for such a device, it’s more of a challenge. It will be more than likely I will build it into a box and save it for the apocalypse when I give people hope by transmitting archived episodes of The Archers convincing them they are already dead and nothing worse can ensue.