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We’ve all seen the neat projects on the web where someone uses a power supply taken from an old PC.    There is something simple about the project, yet so insanely useful and versatile.

I have not seen many that were as “polished” as the power supply project here.  This is from the blog “TG’s Electronics Exploration”.  The project is laid out in a way that will give you multiple power options as well as a digital readout.  Most of the power supply projects I’ve seen are relatively simple hacks where the basic simple values of a PC power supply are used (5 volts, 12 volts, etc).  This has many more options.

I really like how clean the layout is as well as the LCD’s.  The other really neat thing about his – the work isn’t wasted if the power supply eventually dies on you.  It is relatively easy to move all the electronics to a new supply.

The project page can be found at:

http://tgbuilds.wordpress.com/projects/diy-bench-supply/

The next website we will talk about comes from a sit I visit on a regular basis.  Not ham radio, but plenty of electronics information and kits – ladyada.net.  I used to run a hackerspace in my area.  We did a few projects to get people soldering.  One neat project was a “TV be-gone”.  Simple device where you build it, put it in a container (I, of course, used an Altoids tin) and use it to turn off TV’s.  Great when you’re somewhere where a TV is on, loud, and nobody is actually watching the thing and you can’t even carry a conversation with the guy next to you.  Simple enough project.

This site goes into several questions I get from potential hams when I teach radio classes, including:

What is a power supply?

Why use a power supply?

What’s inside a power supply?

AC/DC theory.

A really neat primer geared towards those that may not understand anything about all those wall warts that are drawing tons of power when not used!  I almost passed this up, as I know enough about power supplies to get me through what I need for my projects.  I found it a neat article that allowed me to probably explain it easier to those that aren’t technically inclined.

Check it out at:

http://www.ladyada.net/learn/powersupply/index.html

Now, if you have any links to great projects or informative sites, please leave them below.

Series Four Episode Thirteen of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• Urgent notice to South Africian amateur radio licensees 
• Ethiopian Amateur / Ham Radio Society back on the air
• New shortwave frequency for Commando Solo 
• International Museums Weekend
• SatNav Jamming
• Powerline to pollute Cumbria 
• Council of Europe recommends RF free zones 
• US Amateur / Ham Radio 60m under threat
• ARRL VHF/UHF advisory committee seeks input
• Ham Radio in NY Times Podcast
• DXpedition to Palestine 
• 21 MHz band Aussie radar
• NZART Amateur of the Year 
• Norwegian Radio Amateurs provide emergency comms 
• Amateurs help NASA to receive solar images 

Your feedback, US Hambrief report from Chris Matthieu (N7ICE) and Martin talks about the Joys of Electronics.

Series Four Episode Thirteen of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• Urgent notice to South Africian amateur radio licensees 
• Ethiopian Amateur / Ham Radio Society back on the air
• New shortwave frequency for Commando Solo 
• International Museums Weekend
• SatNav Jamming
• Powerline to pollute Cumbria 
• Council of Europe recommends RF free zones 
• US Amateur / Ham Radio 60m under threat
• ARRL VHF/UHF advisory committee seeks input
• Ham Radio in NY Times Podcast
• DXpedition to Palestine 
• 21 MHz band Aussie radar
• NZART Amateur of the Year 
• Norwegian Radio Amateurs provide emergency comms 
• Amateurs help NASA to receive solar images 

Your feedback, US Hambrief report from Chris Matthieu (N7ICE) and Martin talks about the Joys of Electronics.

I happened to logon to my eQSL account the other day – I’d recently configured my logging program, Winlog32 to automatically upload QSO records as I make them. I hadn’t logged into eQSL for quite a while, but I noticed that I’d qualified for eDX100 (100 countries confirmed on eQSL) and ePFX300 (Over 300 prefixes confirmed on eQSL).It was fun getting the certificates back – I’m not at all into the whole awards / QSL part of radio at all – but since all I had to do was press ‘Apply for award’ then that’s ok!Funny wording on the certs though…..

I’ve been quite tempted by one of the Anytone AT5555 10m transceivers. Quite clearly its heritage is a CB radio, but there’s an appeal in the simplicity of it. A few watts of SSB on 28MHz can go a long way as we know by now, and FM can be fun at times. Partly I’d thought about having one for the car – as long as I could find a 10m mobile antenna that will fit under the barrier at the station! Reading around on the web, reviews are fairly favourable. Still haven’t quite convinced myself to push ‘buy’ on the website! Anyone reading this that’s tried one?Either way – the musings have convinced me to reroute the coax from the Butternut vertical to the shack (it was previously routed to the lounge…) so that I can listen on 28MHz a bit more on one of the rigs I’ve got around. If I get a chance this weekend I’ll work on that.

It’s a rainy lunchtime in London and I just popped over to the City branch of Maplin to pick up a few connectors for something I want to do at the weekend. Whilst I was in there I had a look around.

To my surprise, under the communication section was a 144MHz handheld for about £90. It’s badged Moonraker, but I’m guessing it is one of the many radios finding their way to our market from China. Doubtless the quality isn’t going to be quite as good as one as one that you’d pay two or three times the price for, but at that price it would be worth trying.

What excites me about seeing equipment available so readily and as cheaply is that it has the potential to tempt people to take their first steps in amateur radio – or even to return to the hobby.

I’ve worked quite a number of people who had dropped out of the hobby over the years, but had seen the budget priced transceivers and been tempted to pick one up and try it out.

If you’ve got a ham licence, but no transceiver – why not give one a go! Amateur radio is much more than an HT – but every journey has to start somewhere!

All the news sources–I saw it on Yahoo!, of all places–are churning out stories today about the current state of the surface of the sun. Three different “experts” have issued dire predictions about the sleepy sun and what it means for mankind…and not just us hams, who enjoy bouncing signals off an ionized atmosphere.

You know as well as I do that simply saying this cycle is slow to develop is not going to attract much reader interest. But if you say there is the possibility that the dormancy of Ole Sol portends historic implications, that it could reverse the effects of that evil, man-made global warming (or make it even more dire), that there could be unknown but potentially catastrophic weather events as a result…heck, even that we are on the verge of another Maunder Minimum, when the sun went to sleep for 300 years and we entered a “mini-Ice Age!”…then you will get some attention. Attention to your columns, your websites, your blogs, your books, your speeches.

I know it is human nature to see things from a very narrow perspective. Understanding things like climate change that usually take eons to be obvious and drawing conclusions about variations in sunspot minima and maxima that only occur in eleven-year cycles are difficult for us mortals to do. Geologic time and cosmologic time and distance are impossible for us to comprehend in our simple little seven- or eight-decade life spans. That’s why all the junk about rapid climate change (which I consider normal weather variation and based on decidedly short-term data) has found so many who are willing to swallow it, hook, line and sinker.

I admit I know little about sunspots or solar weather, beyond the fact that more spots equal better propagation on the high-frequency radio bands and pretty displays of the Northern Lights. And I appreciate data and scientific observation. But seems to me that it is far too early to say the sun is going to be dozing for the next three centuries simply because cycle 24 is a tad bit slow to get moving. After all, many of these same “experts” were touting what an active cycle this was going to be…and they were doing it only a year or so ago.

Reminds me of the high-tech “weather rock” my wife has in her flower garden. “If this rock is wet, it is raining. If it is dry, it is sunny. If it is white, it is snowing.”

I’m still hoping for an active solar cycle. I have somehow managed to be inactive in my amateur radio activities during each of the past two cycle maxima, and I had high hopes for that “arm-chair” ragchew with the Far East on 10 meters in the middle of the day. But if it doesn’t measure up, so be it. I talked to plenty of guys all over the world at the yawning chasm between the peaks, after all.

But most of all, I’d like to see everyone calm down a bit and not be so myopic. We see only a tiny slice of time in our own existence. Even so-called scientific observations are looking at a pitifully narrow slab of time and only a tiny bit of reliable data.

Put it into perspective before you panic and sell all your ham gear. Or before you stop gazing northward for a glimpse of the aurora borealis.

By the way, I checked. There is nothing we can do about the state of the sun’s surface anyway, so why worry?

Don N4KC
www.n4kc.com
www.donkeith.com