Summer...

Sorry for not posting for the last few months but honestly I've been very busy.

Some 20 years ago I took the training in beach lifeguard, then I did some work on the beach in the following years as a summer job. At that time the training was valid for 5 years and I didn't renew it until this year.
This time, (20 years later) it was not easy from a physical point of view to make the training, most of my colleagues weren't even born when I did my first lifeguard summer on the beach.
I was the oldest in the class (but not the slowest swimming) although my time in the 400m is a little more than the double of the current olympic record :) anyhow I'm not thinking in going for an olympic medal

In June I was counting only to work some days replacing some colleagues on leave but I was offered full time in a near by beach so I end up doing all the summer season from 15 June to 15 September ence not having much time for this blog.

Partial view of the beach


The beach dog with the lifeguard hat and the yellow flag!
By the way in all the beach's were's a lifeguard there's a pole with a flag system for sea water conditions: green for good conditions, swiming is allowed; yellow for moderate conditions were swiming is not allowed but a bath is and red for dangerous conditions were beeing near the waterline is dangerous and is forbiden to go to the water (we have some tolerance during a red flag day).


My observation point and some rescue equipment.


During training! Why swim when you can go by "boat"? Guess who am I in the photo! :)

In the end all went smooth and I only had to do some small rescues.

Now I am slowly getting back to electronics and to this blog. Stay tuned!

What's this ? III

While I don't get time to make a more useful and tangible electronic construction here it goes another "what's this" question....:
What type/model is this and what's the frequency range?


From the last post, here it goes the image on reference point GPS receiving antennas for error correction on GPS signal.

As usual in Peniche there's always a seagull on top of something...

What's this ? II

Here's another question, this time I know the answer...


The location is "Cabo Carvoeiro" (Cape Carvoeiro) located near the city of Peniche and of course the building is a lighthouse so that doesn't count as an answer, the antenna is a T type being the top part made of 2 parallel cables (lenght is 92m height is 27m), so could be probably a simple T with more bandwidth or sort of a terminated loop. There's also the possibility of beeing 2 antenas in redundance! Sory but I don't have more exact technical details.
The question is: what's the purpose of the antenna?

Anyhow the late antenna is almost as good as the HF one I putted in my alternative shack.... made in 20 minutes...

can't get more simple than this...2 pieces of wire forming a dipole. Not perfect but much better than using the VHF antenna (it was for reception only!)...

Meanwhile I have been busy with other stuf so you have to wait for some more solderings... maybe next week.

World Amateur Radio Day

It's today!

The IARU theme for the 2011 World Amateur Radio Day is:

"Amateur Radio: The first technology-based social network"


...some do take it to the extreme!

have fun!

What's this?

I haven't had much time for soldering so here's just a litle radio related post to keep the blog updated.

One of this days I went to the city park with my daughter for some fun and in this public space there's a nice little plane, it's there for the time I remember, for some time neglected now it's on a more proper shape. Beeing an ham, couldn't help from spoting some radio related parts.... but there's one I don't know what is it maybe someone can tell me:


The white cap look's like an insulator for the HF antenna at least it's very similar to the ones used in boats but the bullet shaped big device on top I could only guess it's some sort of radar or direction finding antenna inside, honestly I don't know, maybe someone knows....

The plane it's a Beechcraft DS 18/C 45 under "FAP" registration number 2508

100 W on the cheap

I spend some time yesterday thinking in today's build up.

Having read a post with schematics of compact fluorescent lamps I thought what could be done with those components.
Searching in components specs I noted that the MJE13001 transistors have an TF of 1000000000mHz so that's qualify them to be used in an HF amplifier, also their absolute voltage rating is in the order of 400V (collector to emitter).
I didn't planed to use the 400V but instead a more conservative 110V.
I also found that the toroid present in this lamps (first schematic on the site referred) it's similar to those used in broadband transformers (type 43 material) so will be used also.

Remember that voltages present could be lethal so take absolut care building this stuff.


Here's the schematic:



You should absolutly place a bandpass filter since transistors are working near saturation ence increasing harmonics.
Also place a a cover in the assembly before firing the power because they will get a little, just a little bit hot.... also usefull to remove hardware interferences :)
you can reuse the 1 Ohm resistor from the lamp and place them in the emitter of each transistor, reducing a little bit the output power to around 50W according to my readings.

So here you have from 5W to 100W with a light bulb and 2 power transformers!


Photos of the prototype will be placed tomorrow since I run out of cell phone battery. that allways hapens to me in April first.

Day at the beach

Like most Sundays I go for a visit at my parents house.
The day usually begins with some sort of computer problem I must sort out...today it was no exception, the monitor of one of my father's computer didn't turned on, after the normal cable debug I fixed it really fast, exchanged the monitor and putted the old one in the things to fix later or for parts.... while I debugged the problem turned on the FT-102 on 20m band for some listening, and hell, even with the vhf dipole connected the contestants were putting 55, 57 on the southern Europe... who cares about QRP?! Anyhow, Im not a big fan of contests so headed to the beach.... much better, althoug the temperature was not that high, around 18ºC... :)
Here's something for the Eskimos:



Meanwhile the tube/valve direct conversion receiver already works but I am having some impedance mismatch at the rf mixer output so will have to fix it without hopefully putting a, rare around here, audio impedance transformer.

Have a nice week!