Sometimes, I’ll find something interesting on the internet, or in my email, and open up a tab in my web browser meaning to read the page or watch the video at some later date. Often, those tabs stay open for a week or more. Here are three such tabs that relate to amateur radio….Dan
How does radio really work?
N1SPY explains how radio receivers work and builds a radio receiver from scratch
Telegraph Decoder Kit
MAKE: magazine describes this kits as:
…a fun, educational way to learn Morse code and soldering. Some say the telegraph is a thing of the past, but Spikenzie Labs dusted off the design and brought it back to the present! This kit blends a nostalgic telegraph style keyer with an Arduino based decoder. As you successfully key in letters they are shown on a 16 segment alpha-numeric LED display. Two LEDs flash indicating ‘dots’ or ‘dashes’ and a piezo provides audio feedback for the telegraph. After a pause, the display flashes back the last set of characters received.
Since you can re-program the chip with the Arduino IDE, you can hack it for additional functionality (like hooking it up to a ham transceiver or sending automated messages.) Another well done, great looking kit by Spikenzie Labs!
It seems a little expensive ($45), but it is Arduino-based, so it is hackable. Might be fun to play around with.
Free ATV magazine
CQ-DATV is a free magazine for ATV enthusiasts. Despite the name, the magazine covers all aspects of amateur TV. The latest issue was just published and includes:
- News and World Round-up
- A look at Repeater Control Hardware and Software
- DKARS advert
- VIT Character generator
- TV Amateur
- VMIX Matrix 16 Way Keypad Controller
- One from the Vault
- 2018 Region 1 ATV Contest Results
Back issues are available all the way back to Issue #1, published in February 2013.
Steve - W8SFC says
What a great post – full of fascinating things and information. I never really thought about amateur television as a hobby, or an outlet for community use, (of course I have seen public access TV which seems much ado about little, and is sometimes painful to witness, (watching implies some level of entertainment or informative value). These stations are well funded and have lots of expensive gear, so I wonder what the buy in costs would be for an amateur TV station’s gear, and I assume there is an FCC license requirement to operate such a station. Does anyone have this information or operate an amateur station locally?
73,
Steve – W8SFC
Dave New, N8SBE says
How does radio really work?
A newspaper reporter asked Einstein once to explain, hopefully simply, just how radio worked. Einstein replied, “If you pull on a cat’s tail, the head yowls. Radio is just like that, except you have a very long cat.”