Ray, you have an uncanny ability to find an image for even the most obscure reference. LOL  8)

Same here Gil, I saw your post, glad you're flying again.


I was not taught the third method of aerial navigation, pilotage and dead reckoning yes, but smellage no. LOL

Quote from: cockpitbob on September 02, 2017, 11:05:49 AM
I wish I had a better idea what it costs to have SMT parts soldered to a surface mount board.  It's funny that I design boards for a living and yet I don't have a really good idea of what assembling the boards costs.  Our production runs are small (25 to 200) which is just the size you would do for ham kits, but I'm pretty disconnected from the purchasing process.

I bring this up because there's a chance that it's not much more expensive to have the SMT parts put on the board.  There's probably more labor in putting parts in individual kits than there is in assembling a simple SMT board.  For automated assembly, just silkscreen on the solder paste, load the reels of parts in the pick-n-place machine, let the machine place them, then run the board through the oven.  You only have to set-up once for a run of boards.  For a kit you have to cut the correct length of ribbon, bag & tag value of part for each individual kit.

I hate to admit it but no doubt you're correct. The reason most electronics are so cheap is because of highly efficient automated assembly that is able to crank out finished boards by the thousands in very short order. I can see how interrupting that process to bag components for a  true kit could actually increase the price due to the labor involved. Such is the march of forward progress.  :(

That's too bad, I guess I haven't been paying much attention to Elecraft since I already built my K2 and KX1. Looks like I definitely better hold onto them.

My guess is the writing's on the wall and the K2 and KX1 will follow suit in the not too distant future. If you've ever thought to yourself "Gee, I'd love to build one of those someday", I wouldn't wait.

Quote from: gil on August 31, 2017, 03:46:39 AM

QuoteA thought: for some of us will TEOTWAWKI really be so bad as we all think?

Much worse than we think IMHO. There are a LOT of things that we would miss that do not come to mind. The violence between survivors would probably be pretty bad as well. The simple lack of modern medicine would cost a lot of lives. Sure, information would help and might make all the difference, but communications would not be our primary or even secondary concern...

Gil.

It may be sacrilege to say it here on a forum dedicated to the subject, but in a true end of the world as we know it, completely lawless, total loss of civilization, communications will likely be extremely far down the list of priorities after water, food, shelter, and security.

I can't read Spanish but I don't really need to, a picture is worth a thousand words. LOL  ;D

Quote from: gil on June 22, 2017, 03:04:30 AM

BTW, anyone knows what type of connector is used for DC, a 4-pin in-line type? I can't seem to be able to find a new one...

Gil.

I did a Google image search and that looks like a standard Molex four pin connector to me.

I dabbled in VHF weak signal a little quite a few years ago but I'm far from highly experienced, here's what I learned; antenna gain is everything, but let me explain. By antenna gain I mean total gain as in antenna height, gain of the antenna itself, minimal signal attenuation in feedline, antenna polarization, etc. They don't call it weak signal for no reason and a lot of he quick and dirty set ups commonly used on VHF FM don't work well on extremely weak signals.

When I get as chance I'll take some photos and post in the Technical forum about how I used a $6 eBay Bluetooth receiver to tie into the planes intercom system to stream aural alerts from my iPad - and iTunes :-) It's not  ham radio but it could be and some may find it interesting.

Agreed, SMT is a piece of cake. My guess as to why so many are afraid of SMT is it's just different and lots of folks have an aversion to something different than what they know. I truly don't understand the fear of winding toroids, if you can walk and chew gum at the same time you can wind a toroid, they're dirt simple.

Quote from: gil on May 10, 2017, 12:52:40 PM
You can't even listen to VOR or MDB station's identification in Morse anymore...  :( ;D

Gil.

The VOR's still transmit a Morse identifier and technically so do NDB's but good luck finding a working NDB. Interestingly I sometimes find it difficult to copy the ID's because they are sent at such a painfully slooooooowww speed.

Maybe someday I'll work aeronautical mobile although it would likely be phone instead of CW. I'm pretty good at copying/sending code, and I'm pretty good at flying an airplane, but I don't know if I want to combine two "pretty good" activities in an extremely unforgiving environment just yet. 8)  Hard to imagine that when they first put transmitters in planes it was with a straight key in an open cockpit! It makes my fully GPS capable plane seem trivial in comparison, hell just my iPad alone that I fly with has more computing power than the rockets NASA sent to the moon..........of course a lot more pilots got killed back in the early days well.

I'll admit I'm guilty of not doing much at all in the way of radio recently, consequently I have little to post here. The most interesting thing going on in my life right now is also what's occupying the majority of my time; airplanes. I'm currently working on my instrument rating and when I'm not doing that I'm often in the maintenance hanger working on airplanes as I simultaneously work towards my A&P certificate. My amateur radio skills are put to good use though, I've already used my knowledge of electronics to troubleshoot several avionics problems and my instructors are always impressed when I effortlessly identify the Morse Code ID's on VOR's.

Welcome to the forum bkt, glad to have you aboard.