On the Glowbugs mailing list, Frank, W4NPN, writes:
Peter Thornton, G6NGR, has published Hot Iron Newsletter #111. It is also sometimes known as “the constructors newsletter.” It can be found on the W4NPN website.
Not only will you find issue #111, but all previous 110 issues as well.
This stuff is really amazing. Issue #111 is 17 pages full of homebrew goodness. It includes articles or short notes on:
- A couple of different simple receiver circuits.
- Analog switched-capacitor circuits
- Amplifier classes.
- VXOs.
- Homemade HV capacitors for loop antennas.
The editorial opines on why we should build things ourselves:
Small is Beautiful?
E.F. Schumacher went to great pains to explain how technology has debased human creativity and more or less destroyed ‘job satisfaction’ in his book “Small is Beautiful”. Technology diminishes the human appreciation of time well spent; it removes the human element to a great extent and offers convenient, but very limited, mental satisfaction to the user.Think on this applied to your home constructed radio receiver. It might not have all the features a “bought in” receiver offers; it may well struggle to equal the capabilities, or the diversity of functions. But – and it’s a huge ‘but’ – YOU made it. YOU put it together. YOU can modify it, improve it, try different approaches. It’s YOURS, and belongs – in every way – to YOU, not some distant designer who’s Muntzed the d*mn thing down to the lowest price, used midget components only a robot can manipulate, and needs a trained microbe that can solder to repair the blasted thing.
Seriously, take a look at these newsletters.
Dave New, N8SBE says
Bill Meara, N2CQW of Solder Smoke fame, once opined that he felt weird taking the local public transportation with a Hot Iron newsletter in his hip pocket. He was afraid that someone might take it as an S&M publication, or some such.