Episode385 of Freakonomics (July 17, 2019), “What Do Nancy Pelosi, Taylor Swift, and Serena Williams Have in Common?” features an interview with Silvia Acevedo, the CEO of Girl Scouts. Acevedo is a rocket scientist and tech executive with advanced degrees from Stanford. In this episode, she talks about her career in tech and how the Girl Scouts are now encouraging girls to explore science and technology. That being the case, it might be time to see if we can start working with Girl Scouts again.
On the Flying Pigs QRP mailing list, Harold, KE6TI wrote, “Twenty years ago, or more, I managed a program run by the RCA ARC in Indianapolis. Basically we had a bunch of parts that were surplus to the club’s needs and in too small quantities (mostly) to sell to surplus dealers. So we put a list up on the club’s website and offered them free to anybody, only asking to be reimbursed for postage. We also limited quantities so we weren’t supplying hoarders or resellers.”
To which, Diz, W8DIZ, of kitsandparts.com fame, replied, “I think I will just create a type of bulletin board for people to contact each other…a meeting place for “junque.” http://junque.org will be operational very soon. junque.org is indeed online, but there’s nothing really there yet. Stay tuned, though.
In the meantime, read my blog post about the importance of a junk in amateur radio.
Keysight, which used to be Agilent, which used to be Hewlett-Packard, has posted ten webinars that cover benchtop test equipment topic, including:
- 10 Things You Must Know About DMMs
- Four Tricks You Didn’t Know You Can Do With Waveform Generators
- How Resourceful Engineers Get the Most Out of Their Waveform Generators
- Battery Life Measurement Theory and Testing Techniques
- Test at Breakneck Speeds with System Power Supplies
- Making Sense of Wireless Sensor Power Consumption
- Fundamentals of Voltage and Current IV Measurements
- Overcoming Resistance and Picoammeter Measurement Challenges
- Automating Everyday Test and Measurement Tasks in Minutes
You can access them by clicking here. You do have to give them your name and email address, but you can opt-out of getting a lot of spam from them. The webinars are heavily weighted to using Keysight instruments, but there’s a lot of good info in them, too.
Ann Shores says
The ARRL has a radio patch for Girl Scouts: http://www.arrl.org/girl-scouts-radio-patch
Dan KB6NU says
Several years ago, I tried to get the local Girl Scouts interested in doing that radio patch program. They never took me up on my offer. Perhaps I should try again.
Dave New, N8SBE says
I attended a Keysight seminar recently, on basic RF measurements. It was focused on their Field Fox handheld analyzer, but the various measurement approaches are useful for similar instruments – VNAs, Spectrum Analyzers, FFT Scopes, etc. All attendees got a copy of the presentation slides, which were chock full of various computations and useful formulas. I’m not sure if there is an online webinar for this, but folks might find it if they root around enough on their website. Even if you can’t attend the webinar in real time, you almost always will get access after the fact, and will be able to download the presentation slides.
Yes, you do get regular emails from Keysight if you sign up, but notifications of free seminars in your area are worth it, if they match your particular interest. They supply the snacks and lunch, so it’s a win-win all around.
Other test equipment manufacturers do this, including Tektronix and Rohde & Schwarz. R&S recently ran a free full-day seminar on 5G, where they brought in their expert from Germany. It answered a lot of questions I didn’t even know I had.
Another good source of information is the various micro chip suppliers. Get on their mailing list (NXP fka Freescale fka Motorola Semiconductor, Microchip fka Atmel, Infineon, Renasas, etc, etc) ST Micro has amazingly inexpensive breadboard kits, available on Amazon. The STM32F4VE with ARM3/16MB flash/2 CAN, lots of I/O goes for $10 (that is NOT a typo). Get the ST-Link USB programmer for a similar price, download the free Eclipse programming environment or the free-for-some IAR Workbench. ST has free tools on their website to configure their boards, etc.