Getting ready to take my amateur extra license but I’ve gotten interested in kit building again and building gizmos for my own use.

Working on a cluster of digital countdown timers for the comm shack that we can use to do 30 minute interval check ins. Going to build four of them - one for each plane we might be working.

Anyone else into this kind of thing?

Never been into building electronic stuff, just wanted to say good luck on the Extra exam. I remember a lot of circuit and antenna questions on mine. If you know the ARRL book, you'll do fine.

I just built a power supply for an old HeNe laser.
It hadn't run in 20 years.

It fired right up.

Next repairing a stage amp I bought on eBay cheap.

It is a 2K dollar amp, got it for 150, with a bad channel.

That will kill a weekend chasing the circuit.

If I can figure it out/find a way to get them to do what I want, I’d like a few meshtastic/LoRa 2 way pagers.

This was a year in the making with many scrapped designs. It will be a computer keyboard powered by Raspberry Pi RP2040.

I watch Big Clive tear downs, does that count?

Jokes aside, I do dabble in the occasional circuit design, but I’m much more comfortable in the digital world so I prefer arduinos to opamps

I think my best, and worst, project was an attempt to make a linear voltage regulator to power my cordless drill with wall power when the battery was dead. I used a transformer out of an old server UPS, a bridge rectifier bolted to an old CPU cooler, and a capacitor the size of a coke can. I didn’t want to mess with making a switching supply because I’m not that good. It did technically work, but it was the size of a shoe box, pretty gutless compared to a battery, and far more likely to kill you with that stupid capacitor. I had fun with it though.

- Bret

"Recreational electronics" sounds like a euphemism for something naughty.

eh?

I’ve not played with SMT devices but I’m happy to play with discrete components and DIP style IC‘s

One of my first builds is a Nixie tube digital clock. Finding sockets for the tubes was a chore rather than soldering them to the display board.

The timers I’m working on use old style 7-segment displays.

Nice!

Made a few countdown timers and clocks with Nixie tubes as well.

The 30mm tubes are a good place to start without going broke. The 40mm tubes cost roughly six times as much.

Also played around with HeNe lasers. Much to my surprise, it ran best off of two 9v batteries.

We are currently refurbishing a Sun Tune oscilloscope from 1969.

I started out building commercial kits from Heathkit many decades ago. From there, I did a complete stereo system from Dynaco which consisted of a solid-state amp which output 60 watts RMS/channel, a discrete solid-state preamp and a AM/FM tuner which was a semi-kit.

Several years later, I began building several projects which were ham radio related from discrete components using mostly point-to-point wiring. One was a 12 volt power supply and another was a 75 watt CW transmitter which had a single 1625 vacuum tube final. The transmitter plans came from an old ARRL Handbook.

I haven't done much recently with the exception of a few ebay kits for digital clocks and a headphone amp. It's become much more difficult to source parts. There used to be several electronics parts stores in town and a very good electronics surplus store as well but they're all gone now. I found out recently that an old favorite online surplus store, Fair Radio, has closed their doors after many years.

You have the online mega-stores like Newark, Mouser and DigiKey but shipping has become cost-prohibitive. It's not uncommon for the cost of shipping to exceed the cost of the parts ordered even though the parts could easily fit in a small padded envelope.

PS
Did you ever get your log periodic antenna up and on the air?

I did and it’s a champ. I sorta cheaped out getting the T6 but now wish I had gone for the T10. Maybe I will upgrade next year.

One thing that I’m looking into is a remote multi-selector switch for multiple antennas over a single coax.

I had forgotten about Newark. I’m thinking about buying a couple larger assortment kits of various IC’s, transistors and op amps.

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
I did and it’s a champ. I sorta cheaped out getting the T6 but now wish I had gone for the T10.

I don't know. For less than 1 db gain, you have to deal with a boom which is twice as long and with greatly increased wind loading and which weighs 30 # more. I think you chose wisely.

I used to build my own electronic gadgets (to include etching my own circuit boards) in support of my R/C airplane flying. Back in those days, when nitro was king and electric airplanes were a seriously underpowered joke, my nitro models needed a number of electronic items for ground support.

These days I don't build stuff anymore, but I do enjoy fooling around with the electrical items inside my airplanes, and messing with my HAM/GMRS handheld radios. That's about my limit anymore as my eyesight is getting where I just cannot see the small stuff these days.

I have built some LED kits and done some of my own blinkers powered by a Pi. I have always wanted to by able to do more repairs, but just do not have the knowledge set to get them working correctly.

Good luck on sitting for the Extra exam!!

I'm an ARRL Volunteer Examiner (VE) - always happy to see someone want to advance.

I wish I knew more. I've got a bad module in my Mini, looks like there was a leak & a corner of the board was wet.
Pretty sure it's not repairable, but it would save me $$$ if it could be salvaged.

Only if using a PS5 counts.