HRWB 223 - A Conversation with Bill Meara from the SolderSmoke Podcast
02:42:40 Share

Today and the workbench of conversation with bill mira from the solar song podcast, stay tuned.

Welcome to the workbench on your host George K. J. Six view. This episode of the ham radio workbench is brought you by flex radio, the leaders and high performance, softer defying radios offering each of transfer s amplifiers and other radio accessories. Check them out.

IT flex radio outcome and by digging, offering the world's largest election of electronic components and outstanding customer service. Start your next project with D G, K. dot.

Come here at hammer radio work bench. We feel like failures. If you don't buy something we talked about by the end of the show, ask yourself, can you really live with that?

Welcome to the hamdy workbench podcast. You are by weekly deep dive on technical topics of interest to the radio amateur. Well, this is the first time you join us.

We're so happy that you're here. We have over two hundred and twenty episodes in our back catalogue. You can check him out on our website, hander's dia workbench dot com. You can connect with us on our facebook group, look for the hamburger dia workbench group.

You can also go to discord and get the never expires link of our website and join us and thousands of other listeners over there on discord, check about our projects. And you can also talk with us live in direct on the d mr. Brand master talk group, three, one, zero, seven, five, or on the all star node, five, five, nine, one five.

Well, on today day show, we have a very, very special guest. I always say we have a special guest, but i'm particularly excited that we have a special guest today and that bill mirror, bill is into C, Q, R. And of course, all of our audience knows bill very well as the founder and host of the solar smoke podcast and bills been doing podcasting for a long time. And so we're just great gratefully have bill on the show today. We will talk all about some of his newest projects and station setups and so forth.

And for a little bit of background, bill was licensed back in thousand nine hundred and seventy three and has held held several different call signs um notably into ccr is main call sign and he does his solter smoke podcast with two COO snow a pete Juliano and six Q W and also deek k for das and they focus on home brew radio topics particularly focused around designing and building home blue single side band equipment with a little bit on sideband digital but mostly on on sideband um in some cw and the audition most podcast has a lot of connections out into R Q R P world especially with connections to the G Q R P club which is a long history of home brew and also far hon the youtube e sc who the creator of the bit x radios in a bunch of other radio projects. So billa has got a lot of experienced designing, building in making radios work and and Frankly explaining how that radio gear works, which I particularly enjoy. And one of the other topics on solar smoke that comes up a lot as boat anchors.

And by boat anchors, we mean large old tube type radios. And in that category, I would even put the bills beloved drake or two b receiver, which is a classic of ever was one. And the first time I heard bill talk about the station and his to be received, very thought, this is the guy I need to listen to, was a good radio when he sees one.

And then I got a big poke from bill a couple month back when we did her radio rejuvenation episode with. Then quickly, when we talked about taking a boat to anchor and rip in the guts out, replacing IT with a bunch of new fangled electronics, and bill decided that that was herrick beyond belief. And so I think we have to have a little bit of chatter on the show today about the process CS. And of course.

I just love some fuses on.

I'm say, it's okay. You know, when the words are coming out of my head, i'm thinking, I think bills gonna go for this, but we did IT anyway. So anyway, so bill, we're just so happy to have you here.

One last thing I want to mention two is when we started doing the hamdy workbench. Now back in what twenty sixteen, I think is when we started this, you are already doing your pond cast for about ten years at that point. And salter smoke was in a way, a really an inspiration for us to do the workbench and not try to do the same thing that you did, but kind of in a similar, similar complimentary vein. So that's why I am always really happy to have you in the show here. So thank you for all you do for our hobby and for taking the time to be with us.

Well, thanks very much, georgia, and thanks to thus and events into the whole have media work bench crew is is a pleasure. And I am really glad that this that your podcast join us not in the airways. Well, I guess some sometimes in the airways, but on the internet cables anyway, in the in the internet to talk about, you know, the work bench and radio work bench where things are built, where things are made.

And you know, I was going to talk about what I have on my bench right now, which which you guys can see that, but we're we're not really going videos and nobody else can see that. But it's it's another version of the myth, bosch S S D. transfer.

I found that when I was down on the dominant republic over the summer months, I have a checked down there, and the checked is evolving and talk about that a minute. But I kind of missed having the, the, the twenty meeting portion of the myth poster transfer that I built, which is a version of far hands bitch x rag. And I just missed that.

I mean, I had I had another ride down there that would cover those frequencies, but I just wasn't the same. So when I got back here to the states in september, I said one of the things i'm going to do here is i'm going to build another one and i'm building another one. The first version covered both seventy five meters in twenty.

This one only covers twenty because I just never use the seventy five meter portion. And it's been great fun building IT. But I wanted to say a few words about why someone would do this.

I really like S S B transfer s, because I think phone transfer s in general be a dsb or S S B are like magic carpets. They they Carry your voice to the far corners of the earth. And to do that with something that you've made yourself makes A, A, A, A special trip.

They also bring back to you the voices of people from the other side of the planet. So you can hear that fell in indonesia laugh. You can hear the accent that somebody has from from spain or italy.

And it's it's not at all dry as much more human. There's a human connection. There are an element that I think gets gets lost by a lot of the other modes is certainly lost.

And seed of you. I mean, people will talk about all they could recognize the fist of so and so and sure, you could do that. But it's not the same.

It's not the same when you're using the digital modes either where you're just seeing you know let us go across the screens so this up and special about about the S S B transceivers rs b rags in general, phone rags in general. So I think there's one of the reasons that the podcast focuses on that. Now it's hard.

It's not easy. A lot of times we will get questions. People will say, well, I really like that rigor build. I've never built anything built myself before, but I want to build one like that.

And we kind of try to be gentle and we say, you know, slow down, you know, don't bit off more than you could do and you publish to build a few other things before you take on S S B transceiver, because S S B transitive s are as Frank Harris k zero I Y E in his book from crustal set to sideband. As he puts that, S S B transfer s are the nobel prize of ham radio home brew, I don't know, haven't built a bunch of them. I think maybe that's a little bit over the top.

But IT is hard. It's difficult. And even if you're an experience builders, sometimes you can you can run into problems. Uh, in George, I just wanted mention a few other things.

You mention the drag to be I am glad you mentioned that I love that way, but it's certainly not a boat anchor. It's a, it's a boat anchored is really small. And you guys in the video can see, I want one point back here that's A D X one hundred.

I think that is the original boat anchor. I think people call IT the boat anchor. Because of different points in history, people are actually selling them to merchants men for use as actual boat anchors.

I was going to ask, I think that's the term because if you if you tired, chain around the thing and throat in the water, it's going to anchor the craft that your you're sAiling around. IT, I actually did this one time in in, in professions capacity, not what the D X. One hundred.

No, I was at a diplomatic post one time. And they had an old mechanical teletype. I used to call a dowden hype writer. I hated the thing.

And I was being replaced by laptop computers and and the subject came up, what do you do with this thing? And I thought I looked around for hams. We might want to take IT nobody wanted IT.

So I think IT IT actually did go to some some, some Fisherman, what a chain around IT and and use that as their old anchor. So any that's time that's IT. And then finally for inspirations, uh George, I really like what you said about, uh, saw of smoke being the inspiration for him, radio workbench.

But we have inspirations also, some, some, some, some for some some people came before who kind of inspired us. One I talked about a line on the podcast is gene shepard. K, two, O, R, S and h shape was on wr broadcast station at a new york seven ten A M at a new york city.

And he was on, like, every night we just talking and talk and and talking and know how he did IT. So he frequently talked about his days as as a Young radio amateur and hamond in inDiana. Now he played a fast and loose with the truth.

He had to fill to have hours every night. So not everything, what you need to take, what what ship said with a grain assault sometimes. But he really hit the nail on the head when he was described in the the ada, the romance, the beauty, the attraction of of home brew ham radio, the other inspiration.

And not many people might know this, but. Uh car talk, take contact the collapsed brothers they were on you know public broadcasting and for a long time and they would just take calls and talk about their work on old cars and just the kind of friendly banter, the back and forth, the joking between them. Um I I was listened to a car talk along before we did the podcast. And I guess when we did the podcast, the car talk, think kind of came to the four so those were the the inspiration that I would .

say the tablet brothers so I I have .

to have to mention .

that that um the gene pard thing was interesting to me because I didn't know who gene shepherd d was and I heard you mentioned him and I thought, oh, men, I got looking into this because you being, I guess, a new york based broadcaster and me growing up in an L A, like wind, I know who gene chapter d was. So, so I duggin to IT, and I could find some of the recordings of this shows on the internet, and it's really fun to listen to.

And I could totally see where he would be, a fascinating character, dunny, as an air personality, but an on air personality who is going to talk about dio? wow. What a treat that must have been really amazing to see.

Isn't gene shepherd like an astronaut? something?

No, he's not an national ont. no. Is Allen r do you think an Allen chaper? No different. Anybody wants to listen to the, to the, to the ham radio broadcast from gene shepard? Just go to the solar smoke blog soter smoke that blog, spot that com.

And in the search box, just write gene sheer J E A N shepard and it'll take you to collection of jeans most memorable um ham radio stories. I think the most memorable was when he his highway module latter was acting up. He tried to get one hundred and sixty meter phone and is housing upper housing? Modulator was given him trouble.

And right the right, in the the worst possible moment, he realized that he had set up a date with the girl from the local high school, so they went out to the date, but he could not get his mind off the rising modulator and his problems. And the girl looked at him and said, is there something wrong? And he look back at and he said, yeah, there's something wrong.

My higher module latter is distorting. And I don't know what to do about IT. And SHE looked at him and he said, I think there's something wrong with you.

Your mother should take you to a doctor. And I think I mean, in that in that little conversation that kind of captured IT, I think we've the those of us were truly crazed about electronics. Have been there, you know, I have been you can you think? And why can I get that thing to work and continue .

to be there that that was not a one once and done?

You know, we talk on the podcast and ah I don't know whether pete has had this nightmare. I know dean has pepe's been in the game for a long time, so he might be beyond this. But if you really struggling with something, i've had the nightmare in the in, in the dream. In the nighttime, I start removing parts from the board to see if I could find out where the trouble is located. And at the end of the process, i'm standing there with a completely clean board and a big pile of parts, and I still have been found the problem.

It's still working.

They team tabling, he said that dream.

oh my god. Well, that's like the old joke. I don't was a joke about some electronics companies where they would design a thing and then management would start pulling parts out until they stop working and put that last one back and go shipped.

That's got months. I like like .

months TV.

They gets working. Oh my god. Remove all kinds of captain and filter component. And if the things to work so kind .

so so let me just brief ly reduce everybody else who's journ us tonight with bill. So we have by special arrangement with the national hockey league, we have another special appearance tonight. And that is rad, who has been very busy with hockey for the last, oh what two years and and we don't get a chance to get rid of the show very often. But by dropping bills name, rudd made special effort to be with us today. So hello rudd, how are you being muted on what is .

locally muted.

technically .

chAllenged?

It's been a while.

It's been a while now. Now despite our best efforts, he still muted. Despite our best efforts, we knew that rod was coming back from, uh, the united states, amErica today and and I did place a phone call to the canadian customers and border control and we I did try to slow down his entry, but IT appears that success and .

that was a good billion effort.

I don't want to go into the details of how I was stopped in the little I had to go into. So thank you.

You are, oh, my.

How are you right? It's been asian .

since you've been on a man. I'm good. I'm good. I'm i'm feeling hectic. But like I said, bill was on and I just tomorrow. How could I not .

show up exactly?

We're you like your hair, rod?

Well, very glad to to see you again, sir. Then I tell you i've got through boat of your books now.

which once the right of the radio book and the men, one ones radio book and .

the counter book.

oh man, the counter book. That's the one, that's the one I tell everybody that you would definitely not want to go to the beach with that thing under your own IT sounds kind of a bomber beef a beach read no.

no IT wasn't but um that was, uh, really good man. Nothing nothing but respect for people that will jump out of perfectly service for aircraft.

Thank you. Red, I I actually fun with more fun, right? The the radio book side of smoke book that was a lot of fun and that I wrote another one called auto them.

And it's about the ten year experience of me and my family living with living overseas in in europe. We went to europe two thousand, came back in two thousand and ten. So we kind of talk about all different things that go into living in those places. And I living there is a kind of about expat diplomat family. I'm gd, thank thank you very much.

yeah. And I mean, i've got this right. You are a Green over right?

I was, yeah, I want to come go.

Yeah yeah. okay. Um that's a whole the conversation, man, for the help these guys.

No, not at all. Actually that sounds fascinating. So before I come back to that advance, we want to say quick, hello.

I heard that after evening noon.

how things in Alberta.

things in southern Alberta, I am in deep southern Alberta that we record this and and to no surprise, anybody who live here.

it's dam. Wendy called.

I is not yet. No, IT was a IT was fifty some degrees today, as I was driving bomb, very nice, very bomb.

And we also have Thomas, he, Thomas aria.

hey, do not find I got power. I got water.

Things are great. We have to get nepal from you now this i'll be almost when this show posts almost a month since the big hurricane. So yeah a little things that I .

think the day is technically five weeks since to hurricane and yeah things things are improving. Its a lot of administrative stuff now trying to line up um work on our houses to fix things, trying to do debris removal. Um i've got to rent a um width litter um probably next weekend.

I won't IT this weekend, next week because i've got a tuna with display. I've got ough. I've enough firewood for like three more lifetimes and as the summing i've got some good longevity.

I've still i've still got something more far with than i'll ever need. Um the yep things are things are steadily improving here. Still lots of chAllenges, still lots of um chaos there in town where there was flooding and stuff. But appear we're doing okay.

good one one things are at least getting kind of back to Normal. So maybe you give a little bit more of a break down later. We do a bit of a round table. So so bill, I want to switch back to you. I do want to make one more common though you mentioned click Clark from cartoon, and there is one aspect of that show that really reminds me of the workbench, which is some guy would say, you know, i've got my my transmission is clunky and blab a blah and then the first question one of them would asked is, so what color is the car?

My favorite party is what they would ask them, what does this sound like? Make the sound the first I book back back. What color is the car? And these were they both? The, they were physicist, that mi T, I think in some work, they say every time they said cambridge basuto the other way would say.

The funny .

sky on the planet, too, and I used to listen to them and I could not. It's like a show you couldn't turn on and turn back off. You had finished listening to IT because they were so funny and and you always kind of learned a little something to and you um they never took themselves too seriously and they are just I mean a wonderful chemistry of course, his brothers, I guess but yeah .

especially if you could care less about cars. But you love watch listening to the show know you have got something. So so bill, when people start listening to disorder, smoke and they have no interest in radio at all, you know you've captured the right audience.

I I think so. And we have had them, we've had people, you know, they'll still say, I, anna, build something and then we will point will try to point them sensible direction, not that we're trying to be, you know snows and say you just can't build an s be transformed, do that because we know if they try to do something that's too ambitious, they will fail. They'll be turned off.

They'll never build anything again, whether if they start out small, have uh uh uh a small success and they'll be incremental success is. And after a while, they could be building something more ambitious. So what we usually start out with is something like the michiel mighty mind, which is A A single transistor Christal controlled transmitter, that even if you don't really like C W or no C W, the fact is you'll be making some R, F.

And it's it's a way to kind of get to build your own confidence that I built something. And I can hear IT in the in the receiver when I connect power and you are producing R, F of making a signal. I I tell people, I said when you do this, you have built a transmitter, which is some that today, a human, what ninety ninety five percent of radio amateur have never done, and you will have done IT.

You will bend you, you, you have joined the ranks of home brews now. And the harder, the harder one is to build a receiver. When when I was a kid, when I got started in ham radio, even even big Operations like the A, L L said, you know, well, you know, you can build transmitters but receivers, well, you really should buy a commercial product because there too hard and that's just, it's just not true.

It's it's too hard if you try to reproduce something as big and complicated. But if you you stay small, small direct conversion receiver, you could you could do that just a little bit more with a little bit more degree of difficulty than you. And there you'll have a then you will really join the elite.

You'll join the alleged ranks of someone who's actually listened to the hand band with A A receiver that they have built themselves. And that's that's really nice. You know one thing i'll say, just just, uh you know far hand, our friend from hydrogen view two E S C.

Here, see the designer of the bit x series of transavia, starting with the bid dx twenty. He designed the bit x twenty in one overnight flight from sweden back to india. He had nothing with him but a notepad, the calculator in his cell phone and and a pen.

And that's that in that flight, he designed the bit x twenty. And many of us built bit x twenty years. But when he when he gives that, he he provided the schematic. He didn't provide kids.

He just provided the schematic and IT also provided a written description of how to put IT all together, how to build at stage by stage, and when he when he gets to the point where the the final stage of the receiver portion has been done, he advises, stop, stop right there. Spend the evening sitting back listening to the receiver that you just built before you even start with the transmitter. And I always follow that advice.

Actually, it's sometimes it's hard to go on because we haven't so much fun with the receiver. I think, okay, now I got to build a transmitter. I suppose I have to talk, yeah, okay, so i'll build a transmitter. But the receiver is is the fun part I think I agree with for and I and I appreciate him given a sad advice.

I think that there really is a tremendous satisfaction in building something in actually having at work regards as how simple IT is that mean like you said, the mighty might probably what a dozen parts. I mean, I don't think it's a very complicated transmitter, but the fact that you can actually build something that would work is is very satisfying. And um it's obvious when you say that, right?

People will, of course, but when you actually do IT IT really is this really is pretty cool that you can turn a thing on and actually have at work. And I do get the desire to go by the commercial radio. I mean, heavens, I got plenty of them.

Might obviously, I love playing with what a commercial company can do to make a professional product is very exciting because i'll never do something that sophisticated. But on the other hand, building something yourself, whether it's a kit or eventually stretch built stuff, is is very rewarding. So you would recommend a kit then. I mean, IT be really hard for somebody to do their first home brew project and try to really design IT .

and build IT. When I ouldn't, I would not recommend a kid. I disagree. I think kids are like an unnecessary crush. And what people often do with kids is they get a bag parts and aboard, and then they just take the parts and stuff them on the board and side of the connections. And it's possible to do that and learn absolutely nothing about electronics.

I mean, most of the the boards that we have are assembled that way in malaysia or in india or in china. And the people who are putting them together know nothing about the electronics, and they don't really have to all because all are doing is stuff in parts onto the board. Even now, it's even being done by picking place machine.

It's not even done by even beings anymore. So I I I would disagree. I don't think it's are are really the way to go.

I think something like the money. My well, you have to go out and find the part. And this right right away, people are rolling their eyes saying, well, I don't want to do that.

I don't have time to do that. I don't want to go to amazon to go click clack clack and vice some parts. And it's so it's so easy go to amazon, ebay and everything you need is right there. Not only that, the postman gna leave IT on the front steps tomorrow morning.

I mean, come on, how hard is that? Um but but once you gather the part, you learn something in the part acquisition process, then you figure out OK how I to put IT on the board, how I A mounted, how I gonna do you face all the questions that a true home brewer faces? Where is if you you started with a kid, I you miss I think you miss ninety percent of that and so I I would say, don't go kid.

Don't don't build the kid. And you know, IT in terms of buying things, you know, one of things we do get, I guess we get kind of up, but he on the solar smoke broadcast, and we because people talk bad about us sometimes, you know, and now, but you do hear a lot of what we we always joke about what people say when you tell me that your rigas home brew and you get you, you will get this very kind of defensive responses. Well, I i'd do that too, you know, but I have an important job and um and i'm not abusing my family so I can't do IT.

You know, excuse me, I ve got, I ve got to go ta tea time and I be holes of golf this afternoon and so you know come on, you could do IT if you wanted to. I mean, IT doesn't take that much time, you know. But and then a lot of time you get you run IT to people more. They who who never realized that IT is possible.

They don't they don't even have an understanding that is possible that the rig that you built, you built so i'll tell people are home brew rig and will say, well, you should go a menu number nineteen and go down to three and check check c and on the menu there and i'm like, dude, there's no menus is a home flu? Rg, it's said a wooden box for grey sake. The box, the box came from the packing material from a trade bill that we we were going to use or the pandemic that's IT.

And then they're like they're still kind of incredulous. They're still, you know wow, you mean you you build that thing? Yeah and yeah, it's become very rare. It's so rare that we we we sort of do blog posts whenever we run into another home brew reg, which is pretty rare.

You one of things, I think he is a good at junk to homeburg your own gear is the community that you could find that knows something about the thing you're building. Yeah, I think you guys do a really master ful job of of like decomposing a project and talking about the v fo or what you know and kind of go into detail about the components that we're selected and how the thing works and how this is like that other thing.

But it's not like this thing in a way that that builds even if they don't they can't talk to you directly, at least they know where's someone else who has done this before me. And there may be some other information out there on the internet about how to do IT. So like, I think a good example of this is a kit, by the way.

So here, violate your prime directive. But like the the no count forty nc forty cure p kit was very popular at when that he came out. And then there is a whole bunch of people who kept like reviving the thing and building like educational that some professor used that a college in blob o blaw.

They used a tech.

I have the good okay that yes. So I mean, there's a whole ecosystem around IT of of education is like that's really useful.

I would think yeah IT. And it's and I agree that that's you know it's also be it's also good to share with people the realities of home brewing, including the heartache. I mean, we joke all the time that, you know, I really shall have taken up stamp collecting IT probably would a good, easier.

You know, we like to share what we call our tales of, wow, all right. This gets to we were talk to IT earlier about jean shepherd know the the date with the fourteen year old old girl I was a tale of wow you know um anyway they are our listeners seem to like IT when we share with them. How much we have suffered mistakes that we have made? No, we and we violate our own advice all the time, like on this rate that I have on the bench right now.

You know, one of the big pieces of advice we give to people is don't try if you're building something big. If you get to the point where you're going to build something big and ambitious, don't just get a board and start thrown parts on IT. And you what the thing to do is to look at the look at that schematic and see this cheered as individual stages, and then build a stage by stage and test each stage before you, you, you, you move on.

Now, on this rag, this is the second time I built that. I got kind of in a hurry, so I didn't throughly test IT. So in the end, I found out instead of put out five minutes, it's put out like half one.

And I I took me a while to go back and figure out what what was wrong. But you know when we give that advice, sometimes guys will come back and we'll say, i'm looking at the schematic and I just can't see the individual stages. And the answer at that point is, well, it's probably an education that you shouldn't try to build this reg right now. The good if you are looking stupid and you really can't tell which wears the audio amplifier and where's the v fo stop. I mean, because if you you just throw to throw whole bunch of parts on the board, you're in trouble.

You need IT, right?

So while while rod's working on that, I I want to make a quick comment and we'll kick IT over the rob rod used the term um on the show multiple times that a king that goes a little bit done this path of modularity which is termination insensitive, which I thought was really I mean a brilliant, subtle comment could you could you touch on that little bit?

But we joked that that the termination in sensitivity means that you go for and breaks up with you and you really don't care.

Thought there was a story about, like Peterson, the end of the line.

Come here, I really .

remind you. But this actually is an interesting story because IT has its roots back in the bit x twenty. So I was built in the bid twenty. And one thing they always tell you when you you start with a Crystal, say you start with a Crystal filter.

If you want to have a smooth pass band in the Crystal filter, the most important thing is the termination impedances at either end, right? And if you if you're building a bilateral rag on receive, the signals gona be going from right to left. And on transport, IT is going from left to write.

So you really have to make sure that is terminated properly on both sides. But then the problem with ordinary amplifiers is that the impedes that they present at the input, say, the base circuit IT is a large far depended on what's hanging off the other side, the collector circuit. And if the thing is going in both ways, it's really hard to make sure that there's the same in pins at both sides, in both directions.

So I went to far hand and I said, hey, how do you know what kind of important, say, the the product detector and the audio amplifiers are presented further down? And how do you ensure that they present the same impedance in both directions? And at that point, he said back to me, he said, you need to use what west and bob cop gives just come up with called termination and sensitive amplifiers so you could build determination and sensitive apple fire that i'll have fifty homes at the input, the input in pains of the amplifier, or say, fifty homes, no matter what you hang off the end, right? You can hang one hundred ones, ten hundred thousand homes that ever still present fifty homes.

And so that's extremely useful if you want to be able to fix the the impedance that is going to go into that amplifier, put one on either and termination and sensitive amplifiers. And you have you you you managed this to solve the the problem of impedance matching in, especially in by directional transformers a by directional transfer presents a really unique chAllenge in this regard. So that's when we started with the with the tears album za one time, because za in italian is like a tea but but zee for imperent get IT yeah .

very good home braying joke.

So I would .

think that that would be super useful to if you let's say you you build a stage and you make IT A A standard impedance and you go, well, that was okay, but I could do Better or maybe he doesn't work and I want to redo IT. You going to rip that out and plugging in something else in its place and IT would naturally work in the circuit without having to have component changes on the previous and subsequent stages to make IT work, right?

Yeah, like it's the tears that we work with are based on fifty ones in and fifty ones out, right? So if you have a if you build a Crystal filter and you determine that the characteristic competence of that filter is one thousand homes, and all you have to do is build an and matching network or a transformer to go from one thousand to fifty, right? And then IT doesn't matter what the impedes of the audio amplifier and the baLances modulator the product detector that follows IT because that's not going to affect the input in aigner.

There are fifty are still gonna like fifty s and you're still gonna able to make IT work with a fifty ome to one thousand omand p and match. Whereas if you weren't using a termination and sensitive ample fire and far hands, first bit x had no termination and sensitive amplifiers. All the amplifiers were were termination sensitive.

And he just locked out mostly that that that that IT worked. But I was a kind of a hazard ous exercise, I think. And and so from on, we start use termination and sensitive amplifiers. I use more time.

Rod, did you would wanna try .

me on that?

right? So having audio difficulty.

So, man, sorry, sorry. right.

So to blow those cobbs out of that.

mike circuit then georgio .

fixie post orgel fix im post well, rod's voice, um well, you know this is so a fascinating discussion and today i've learned that i'm a kit and i'm OK with that. I identify with that and you know the the kind of kids that I enjoy building because I can't read this comedy to tell you where the stages are beyond the power supply and the af output and sometimes the rf output IT depends what i'm trouble shooting.

Uh, the kids that I gravitate towards are those that do all the things build that you that you talk about good discipline, build up the power supply now, test the power supply now, build up this stage and build up that stage. And and IT is a very good, uh, methodical approach. Yeah, I think I got a long way to go before I can beall myself a home builder.

Though you can do IT the events, get the michiel mighty mind. You could do with my friend.

See, I can feel the same way that I i've always been really a kid builder. I not I have no electronics inc. background. Um I just a sort of void warranties has been my .

model throughout life.

So so you know I like the kids that explain what i'm doing as i'm doing IT. I don't like kids. I've had kids. I got a what was IT and and you probably know about this bill because you're quite the um listening and broadcast the side of things.

I got him I think he was called in S S O S S T something a rather is an am transmitter made by company that was absolutely outstanding for a little small in house A E transmitter or I just can't remember the model ever, of IT now. And as I was building IT, IT was, I was beautifully done, beautiful parts that really nice inequality board and IT worked beautifully, but I really didn't explain what was going on along the way. And I kind of just felt like I was like reading a novel, but I just had butter point and you know and so I kind of do appreciate the kids to do that. I I will I will plan to home brew something at some point as soon as I finish my mi bench.

Well, you know you know you talk about understanding, right? So you you guys can see behind me, I have a couple of bookshelves there and that's that's ham radio books. That's that's books that kind of explain how the circuitry works.

And you know everybody thinks that there's gonna like one book, like if you go to buy the A W L handbook, you're good. That's all you really need. And I I just always, in my case, I found that not true.

There's certain books that speak to me that sort of explained things well. There are other books that just don't, even within additions of the A W L handbook, is certain editions. The one thousand, nine hundred and eighty editions, very good.

More recent editions, not so much for me. So you have to find, you know, IT takes A H O, to paraphrase a presidential candidate, instead of IT takes a village. IT takes a library.

You really have to have a variety of books, mean you trying to figure out how something works. You pull a book off the shelf, you look at and you think, well, of my, this not really happen. You go to another book, and finally you find one.

I mean, I love the art of electronics. They've got a great style. I recently found a copy.

Horowitz is the art of electronics, second edition. And he is a, he is a ham, is A A M. I. T. physicists. I think our harvard physicist and has a great neck to use the term the neck for explaining how how circuit tory works.

So I think that's that's one of the big advantages of homebrew ing over kid building or over certainly over commercial uh radio work in that what you do and that you're really learning sometimes the hard way how a circuit works or sometimes doesn't work or why you know, I think for example, on on this rig, when I when I faced the problem that the power amplifier is only put out about a half of one, instead, five words, I really had to dig in there and figure out which of the three power amplifier stages was the problem. Once I identified the stage, and I had to go through and figure out, well, why did I wire wrong? Did I build IT wrong? Did I wine the former wrong? Is a transistor bad?

What I to go through and kind of eliminate each one of these problems. And finally, I found IT. And IT was a tiny little ten register that i'd put in there that had gone open.

So this, the collector, wasn't getting any juice at all. I wasn't getting twelve votes. IT was like three votes on the collector.

And of course, IT wasn't amplifying properly. And as soon as I replaced that register, m five watts, you know, IT is very satisfying moment. Sometimes a good troubleshooting as satisfying is building the thing. If you could fix IT A.

I think finding and fixing a problem is way more satisfying than getting IT right the first time. Now, when you run into a problem, at least I don't go uba problem, you do, I go. My first thought is, oh, i'm never gna figure this out but IT is very satisfying when you finally debug the arn thing you go yes, I you know that's a real sense of accomplishment and you generally don't get that unless you're doing your own design um because hopefully the kids you know are you just going to work if you build a right but i've got i've got a question, bill, when you start a new project, let's you say i'm going to build a new double sideband transmitter, which is which is a favorite topic.

Do you just have enough personal experience that you can just like design IT out of your head because you like cinema hundred times, you know what to do? Or do you kind researched other examples of such a thing? Or how do you even start a project like that?

It's a really excelling question. And I and I came up when I I put I did have a couple videos about this rig and youtube videos and then in an effort to do some some minimal marketing or promotion, I put him on some of the um the facebook post that are focused on this kind of him radio and I really I got right back from one of them kind of a irritable response saying, where's the schematic without the schematic?

This is all useless and I wrote back and I said, I really honestly, I don't have a schematic okay, the other I just I said it's it's more freestyle home brewing. I guess that's wait the way I would describe IT. But let me go into a little bit of a word that you use is really important, George.

Is design, all right, so did. And you'll get sometimes when you you when you've told somebody that you are using a home blue rig, they'll come back and you'll say something like I S. But did you design IT yourself? In other words, if you didn't, then wow, it's obviously not really a home room .

home room so they're like an elite te snob.

Well, I mean, no, it's usually usually somebody who's never built anything at all. They're doing they look to knocking you down a pig by saying, oh, well, you didn't design IT. You just took someone else's design and just built IT.

It's nothing. It's not. It's significant. But the answer we come up with was that, look, nobody really designs the stages anymore.

The coal pits australia or has been around for quite some time. So is the hardly so is the the grounded emitter amplifier. So is so is the, the, the, the L, C, A, V, F, O.

So is the low pass filter. And what you're doing is you're taken a lot of these stages that that are are the books behind me are just filled with these stages and you you're you're taiLoring them, you're putting them together. You're making sure that the impends is match up, that you're you're feeding them properly, that one stage will work okay with the others. You know um my good friend peach liano has probably built more S S B transfer s than any one of us combined, is built a lot of them. He's got a lot of experience and and sometimes peak gets kind of I think irritated with us, maybe with me, especially because he says that i'm I continue to build the same rig over and over again.

And lately, I guess, for the last ten years or so, that's true that you could look out and you could say bill keeps built, built another bix, right? So there's different versions, different versions, but they're all basically the by directional transfer that far hand came up with on the airplane from stocks home to india you know back in what two thousand and thirteen I think or earlier to thousand three two thousand three ah um and but the thing is i'm not a professional engineer there. I'm not a professional technician.

I have no no real personal professional background in this. So if I find A A circuit that I like that works for me, I will keep rebuilding IT. I'll build IT with different variations or use different components.

Uh, but if it's I don't really feel like feel that and and I we joked one time pete and I were joke and that we were going to build instead of bit access, we were going to build defects different different in the bit x defects and we did, you know and okay yeah we find but ah I like you know the bit x that I build. IT is really like the one I have on the bench right now. It's real simple.

It's really crude by current standards. There is, for example, when I go from t to r, there is no sequencing. There is no sequence where that turns to stage on a microsecond before that stage. And boom, this is hope bunch realized and that they go T, R, boom, boom as IT. There's no automatic gain control, you know, because real hams control their gain manually.

Do you think there's a parallel to jazz in this that you're doing variations?

Yeah I think something that's why I say it's sort like freestyle freestyle home bring like jazz like you know the guy gets IT and he builds IT and the the joy of homework wing is that you could do IT your way like I start out like this way over here. I start out with a pine board. This is something that that a really ancient home brewer from the thirties, Frank Jones, used to do.

You start out with a pine board and you could, because you could screw k stages and board and pieces of gear down onto the board. Now I I go a step further and and I buy some copper tape with conductive adhesive, and I put the copper tape on the board. So I have assemblies of a ground plane, but then I can just grow circuit boards on top of that and and then use some some um sada wit to ground the whole thing.

And everything's grounded well. But if I if I suddenly think, okay, well, know, this boards gone over a little bit further than I thought I would. I just stretch the the r amplifier over a little bit. I just I know generally how much real estate i'll need on the board to make the thing work, but IT IT is very much like like jazz, like I would say freestyle home brewing. I guess the proof the pudding is doesn't work is going to take your voice and send your voice to indonesia tomorrow night, you know, and let you and let you hear back.

you know know what do you think the theoretical component count limit is to put in your mental map? So how much can you keep track of when you're looking in a design?

Um I think for me it's like it's like A S S B transfer. You could do that of the bit exercise certainly you could do that, but there's a limit IT gets to your question, right? I will usually build a mono banner like i'll build a raggeder for one band, which most hams just fine.

Mine, by why would you do that? I lately have been building dual bands, like I build t three of them during the pandemic. I D built the myth boston, which covers seventy five and twenty.

Then I built a second one that covers seventeen and twelve because I like the work bans. And I built to the third one that covers fifteen and ten. But for me, gu bankers are about the limit because I don't want to have to go in there and have five different sets of band pass switching going on inside.

There's another limit that I face, and that is, this is, this is another term that we use kind of jokingly hardware to find. radio. H, D, R.

You guys are all into S, T, R. I know s, dr. Wu is the greatest thing.

And look, I I yeah he's for George four to what? yeah. Look, I admire IT.

IT does things that I just can do that. That waterfall is amazing. You see the whole band.

You can see the signals coming down. I love IT, you know. But look, I recognize it's beyond me.

It's beyon my capacity. I don't understand how what's going on inside that CPU. I don't nobody does.

Look, nobody does that CPU probably has upwards of what hundreds of millions of transistors, some of the FPGA might have billions of transistors in them, right? No human being can follow the circuit flow in there. No human being designed IT.

IT was designed by other machines. Okay, so I don't really like IT. I don't like IT. It's like, yeah there was a there was a guy who wrote some uh, kind of A A series of fictional radio articles called Frank Jones to the F M L. A. Mick hopkins and I have a links to him on the other smoke blog but he makes up these stories and the story is basically that Frank Jones, the famous uh ham radio Operator from the thirties, comes back to life in the modern era and is going to try to take back the five metre band because the five metre band used to be a very popular ham radio band and he he in a conversation with the naratu one point, he says, well, it's an interesting receiver you have or how did you get the the second I F to work and the guy said, I don't know.

I just bought IT at the store and Frank just drop this sotto ing her and said, what you want, you let somebody else build your receiver and the guy just had to admit, yeah so I mean, that's the same feeling I have when I look at, like, look here, look, I have right here. Look, this is an, this is an sdr dango, right? That's a complete S, S, B receiver right there.

That's IT. I didn't build IT. I don't know what goes on inside there. It's a complete mystery to me.

I have about as much attachment to this receiver as I do to the, to the, to the apple iphone that I have in my pocket, which is zero. I mean, I I I don't know if anything about IT. I don't so that's a limit that I face. And so that's one of the reasons I stick to HDR rigs .

so well built on the topic of H D R rigs in my head, when I first heard that term, I kind of think because, you know, i've done reviews of srs, of course, see a lot of receivers primarily. And I think that the ultimate hardware defined receiver is the Collins are three ninety. I want you to debate me on that because that thing is like a mechanical masterpiece and you're talking about like be able to understand like how your iphone works. And I look at that and look the mechanics of that. I think I don't if I have ever understand yeah but .

but how IT works. But the r three ninety and the r three ninety eight, especially in our friend Grace and events, is the expert on this day. Grace and said he was thinking about installing A A bench crane in a shack just so that he could flip the r three thousand. And he was dead serious. The thing is very serious.

They are crazy heavy.

They are um but but IT is understandable, it's complicated, but IT is understandable. You can you can understand the signal floor through IT in a way that you just could not with a modern CPU. This is there no, nobody knows how the signals flow inside a modern C P R N F P A, F P G A.

right in some way. The funny thing to me is the first time I looked at sdr technology and trying IT. What does that that really mean? One thing that just I found just fascinating is that generally over simplification, what you try to do in sdr in software is the same thing that we did in HDR in hardware.

So there may be in different number of steps to accomplish the same task, but in many ways, it's just it's in other words, you could reduce the software to find radio to a bunch of math and you could reduce the radio to a bunch of math. So like I don me embarrassingly recently, like in the last twenty years, that the term product detector is a mathematical term. And I mean, i've known the term product detector since I was a teenager.

but the fiction .

exactly IT never IT never occurred to me that IT went like, oh, product terms, like, as in multiplication .

of all right. yeah.

So anyway, I just find that that sort of like it's really doing the same thing, but in different domains, in different physical forms.

But one of the problems, George, is that so few radio amateurs will have the thought that you just explained, right? Guys will go on by the incomes seventy, three hundred. And they have no idea what's going on that box.

They never will. They're afraid to avoid in the warranty. You'll never open IT up.

You know, I think a lot of people look at S D R S, sort of like the replacement for the radios of yesteryear. I you see the modern hands. We're not gna build radios anymore, but we're gona have guys.

We're going to go in there and tinker with the software. It's all software. You see that. And I I just don't think it's happened in a lot. Most of the software is propriety in these rigs, and you couldn't you couldn't mess with that if you wanted to, right? And I don't think most, most people want to anyway, if if something goes wrong with that, they're just going to send that back to the factory and say, give me another one or fixed this one and bommel come back and so that I think it's taken away a lot of um look you know far designed the which is supposedly it's supposed to be in a male part of IT is hardware to find part of is an H D R A and part of IT is an S D R G.

And is thinking behind IT was that this was gonna courage building and innovation among people who are interested in sort of both worlds or one world in the other. But I think that the number of people around the world who have actually home brood and aspired x it's one. It's it's dee K K for das.

I don't think anybody else has done IT. And it's because people come up, people look at and they think, why should I do that when I could just go by an I C. Seventy three hundred? Yeah and it's complicated and I don't. And a lot of times people say i'm just not good at the software. I'm just not and i'm not certainly not .

so well in the country is not trivial. I mean, there's people that do IT for a living. And you know IT IT takes more in the four hours a week to know how to do this stuff. So it's not so easy to pick up now.

And then you get you get specialized engineers who do F P G S, you know and and so that's that's a whole different nitch that you're onna work on. So no, I happily stick with H D R.

And I think that I mean, ham radio is such a broad space, right? You once you get into, you realized what you this is the hoby of a thousand hobby. I think there's a large population who are basically Operators.

They might be interested to some extent the technology, but not to the extent that are gona ever design and build anything except maybe a die pole or something like that. Nothing wrong with that, but that's the majority of people. And then I think you've got a smaller subset who are more technically interested in how stuff really works and are willing to kind of dive in to make it's like I have no desire to build a car.

I have never had the desire of my life to change your transmission or rebuild an engine. It's just not my thing at all. I want to buy a box that's got peddles in a radio and I pressed the pedal and I go and that's that's what I want um and I think a lot of people want that in a radio. Um there's other people who would love nothing more than to build a car from scratch. Not me, but I think I think it's just kind of a different subset of of areas of interest um and so people are either naturally ally inclined to kind of want to know how does this thing really work, not just superficially like down under the hood and then they might get into that sort of thing.

Yeah, I think I think there is room for a middle ground here. And I you know going to take the unpopular opinion. But when I looked at the nortel and that textbook that was offered, that was incredibly attractive to me because I can go through that textbook, look at the stages that were being taught in the course and how they related to that.

But I didn't have to go back. IT was a guided tour. IT wasn't an unguided tour. And and to me, I wanted to resurrect that project because I started working with, uh, a kind of youth group that was looking at this and getting getting their ticket that kind of thing.

And I was trying to figure out a way of getting enough components we can get the boards from the north authority ties the some of the components we are hard to get these days, but that's half the fun too, right as you have to go hunting for things. But would IT would we be able to walk somebody through that build process just like the course was none years ago and learned something that way? And and I think there's value to that for those of us that are like super shaking on this stuff. Um but I you know, bill, i'm sympathetic with the you know go component go hard core right um but I do think there is a room for the my first lego version of a home bill.

Yeah but you know I I would say something about that, rod. You know I I. The cow tech course and all that. But one thing I when I started looking at IT, one thing I realized, and this I think illustrates what George was talking about, about understanding how things work.

That whole rig is built around one icc chip called the only six two S A six o two, the gilbert cell mixer. And I started looking at IT, and I realized, even though i've used this in greeks in the past, I did really not know how the any six o two chip mixed and amplified. And how did they do that? This was a trip that they came up with for the early cell phones.

Can imagine they actually had this thing in early cell phones, but I still couldn't figure that out. And I I just felt uneasy about using that that part in my rigs. If I didn't understand what was going on inside that little black box, and i'll tell you, I think there are very few people in the world who really know how the N A six o two gilbert cell mixture works, including including, by the way, rock ledge.

And the guys run the course of cal tech, which I think is is sad because it's it's knowable. You can do IT. And I struggle IT for a long time.

And I put IT up on the solar smoke blog, how the any six o two bert cell mixture actually works. IT took me it's it's complicated. It's a hard thing to do is is yet to break IT down into three different Operations. But once you do IT becomes knowable and you feel Better, I think about building something with that thing because you is no longer a little mystery black box. You know what's going on inside there in a way that you can't know with A C P O, C P O chip or F P O board, F P, G, A board.

That's that's fair. I think any of the integrated circuits that are fixed purpose, simple things like an Operational amplifier and our camp p is actually A A pretty clever thing when you get right down to IT and non trivial. But it's simple enough.

You can understand IT both from a black box point of view and a circuit point of view yeah you can if you really choose to dive into IT, but once you get into the massive scale parts, then then it's only ever going to be a black box. I mean, I would spend my whole career working with people who who design the most complicated chips. And there's not one person that, that understands how the chip was designed.

They'll be fifty, one hundred people on a big digital chip. Every one of them specializes in a piece of that chip. There's one guy who's good at the pl.

There's another guy that's good at the memory cell as seriously. And you know, like the guy who does the power distribution on the chip is not the guy that's doing the interface amplifier or anything. So so that really is so darn complicated. You need lots of different, not just number people, you need different expertise. I was a kid.

part of IT when I was a kid. I have, I had, and I still have. It's still set here right now.

The helicopters, H T. Thirty seven facing type transmitter. I loved IT. But then one day I was looking there and I was probably listening to gene shepard. Jean shepard was kind of harsh. Gene shepard was harsh on people who didn't understand how the rig work.

He was like Frank Jones, and he he described a higher archy of teenagers in hamilton in inDiana, in which place which your place on the packing order was determined by your technical competence. If you knew who that thing work, you were near the top. If you didn't, you were just hopeless.

You were just, uh, know, you just the great on and wash. Stay away for me. I don't want to know about IT, but I realized that I didn't. So I started studying how does the facing receive a work? My father was a cop in new york city, and he tells, he told the story that he used to come home from work and see, like my tabal, handbooks and schematics spread all over the kitchen table and would say, good god, what is .

this ID up to?

And I would look at of the leg, shepard say, i've trying to figure out how the H. T. Thirty seven works.

It's a facing transmitter. I just don't get IT. It's drive to be dust.

And my sons never gona be a cop.

yeah. So are we on the wrong track? Are we like, sure, we will be taking the concept of that book, like explaining how stuff works. But using a simpler model like that, the radio that we should be building is a simpler radio.

Well, we tried with a very simple radio. We we tried, and dean and I thought about IT, and we went back to this idea that if you build a direct conversion receiver safe for forty meters, if you build a right without using any kind of fancy components, without using the S I fifty three, fifty one ship to generate the signals, you can do IT.

And a bunch of high school kids probably could be able to do this within the same one meeting, and once to twice a week during the course of a semester. We came real close um they didn't do IT and they lost interests. They they claim they were interested, but then they really weren't IT.

The teachers claim ed that they were interested and then they really weren't. And the whole thing is IT was heartbreaking because we got to the point there are only four stages in the rig. far.

Hani says that all of our radios can be described by four stages as a filter. There's an isolator, there's an amplifier and there's a mixer, filter, amplifier, assoiled or mixer. Four stages.

If you understand what those four stages, though, do you could put them together. We put together those four stages into a direct conversion receiver. We had a mixture, we had a band pass filter, we had an audio amplifier, and we had an isolated, or that was IT.

And the students then met, and we had all the sessions needed, and we got to the point where they had built the four stages and that then that that now they want to grow and sitting the sun, they want to take the day off that offer by and IT ended IT, i'll think, collapse. So I don't know whether it's IT for me and this was, look, this was in probably the best public high school in the united states. Okay, this was A A science and technology high school. There were really elle's kids um and they just they didn't want to do IT not we even offered afterwards so we said, you know well you could come over to our ham sharks that will help. You will finish this project you can get IT done so bill.

where they they not interested in radio specifically or electronic stuff in general.

Um both I I think both they they just saw this as well. This is not gonna me get into, you know stand for the harbor, M I, T, no matter what I do. And um they they found I think they were they they found that the construction sort of the statement that you would actually have manipulate things with your hands and sorter stuff and screw stuff in.

But I I really don't understand why we had I mean, we started with a really large group. There were seventy students and uh at at at this high school and IT just IT was IT was we put a lot effort into IT we went down to the school maybe thirteen or fifteen times and um and we got to the very end and they just they just they just stopped. They just stop. The students didn't want to do IT the teacher didn't want to do IT IT was like you suddenly found yourself going to want to go away.

So bill, one time I did a assist was not homebrew ing IT was in the kit rem, um but i've taught both. My daughters were home schooled for most of their career. They actually going to community college now for their last two years of high school.

But we always had these co Operatives with other kind of like minded parents who wanted this proper academic uh setting for their kids. And um I would always get tapped for teaching french geography. And i've done, I did a ham radio course for getting your technician license, which all of my students, that was great.

They almost all Young ladies, and they all got their licenses. But one of the really fun things that we did and h one of the courses I did was we built in A M receiver and I had to do a kit. This had to be done.

I think I had a total of three weeks, uh, for them to come in class, build a kid with all sorting irons. And uh, we did that in two, uh, because that was a pretty simple kid. And then my chAllenge for them was to dx something with IT.

And I had a prize involved. And so I had them like, take these kids they have just built. I taught them how to like kind of optimize IT, how to try to find IT. But I wanted to them to go out and use this kind of, i'll be honest, IT wasn't like exactly a surgically precise receiver, this thing, for finding and locating a signals. I said, I don't care where IT is on the dial.

I just want you to I D the station and the stations tend to do IT at the top of the hour so just listen and tell me what you find and whoever gets the the further D X you know when surprised and um and I kind of got them all game of fired a little bit after they finished IT because I think that they would have they would have just like finished IT and been like, okay, well that done, let's move on. But they actually went home and everybody participated in IT, much to my surprise and IT was a lot of time to hear the results, said that none of some of them had never listened to a real radio before. Ah they're always to like things online and stuff like that. So I think that it's kind of fun of you mention that about that high school and I realized when you say it's kind of this lead high school and really focused, ambitious high probably students and you think about IT, they probably they were filtering out everything that didn't get them into the school they wanted to get into.

And so like we we tried, we we even came up with certificates that they could use in their college applications. We had a, we had a guy, our good friend, down in orlando, walter k four, k uh, X X. He used to do this.

He used to try to do this in in a local high school, and he told us that he would. He offered a prize of five hundred dollars for any student who would use the receiver that we built to build and also build a simple transnational. And check into their sunrise nett down the floor, five hundred bucks. No takers, not zero. Wow, I mean, if you had offered me five hundred box around high school.

yeah when you're in high school, father but meant something. You know, this this .

is going to .

going got the new time.

Not mean again. Are .

is George.

George is a little is beauty bit? Yeah, that's orge. And I think I would have bit with you. They are bill. I would have, like, jumped on five hundred.

I was the same bill .

when when you in high school, five hundred dollars meant something.

I just five hundred dollars hundred years in north Virginia is not get IT not make IT happened.

I have five box like a fat kid .

on a smart being.

The fat kid like smart used, by the way, smart is are something different. Canada and the the edited states have little link to canadian marty and the show notes.

So in the way, I think this is this is a different topic, which is like how do you get people interested in her radio? I have a very contrary point of view, which is don't bother people. I think people are either naturally in, for the most part, naturally interested in this sort of thing or they're not. And I think trying to get get people to want to participate and something like this when they're not naturally incline to is hard to say that is IT is I mean.

I often say, you know, suppose you were out there and try to get a whole bunch of high school kids interested in steam locomotives. They're just not interested in IT right in that way that when I was a kid, when we restarted on hand radio, nobody recruit me. Nobody cared with our interested this stuff for that you know I just was you know IT wasn't like I was forced into IT.

So I am with you, George. I I don't know. I think it's I think it's kind of I think though it's kind of.

you know, in this in this home school environment, I keep provide mention this before. But when I did the herd, of course, uh, they were looking to me to do something that would be stem related for a their high school students to me, december requirement because all of these parents, like I said, they do the proper thing. They have a very academic environment for their kids.

They're structuring at like school. You have teachers and students in classes. It's not, it's not just a home, home school thing. And I thought, okay, let's do this amateur radio and be great to teach the technician course. I mean, that's that's fantastics like a curriculum m built right there.

And I pitched IT to most of these moms, and they were like amateur dio really and um they had no interest at all until I told him know there are a lot of amateur dio scholarships and like unanimously they all agreed that the amateur dio is the way that we were going to do things and and then the funny part was so I had as I was doing the course, I didn't want to to speak, here's the book, here's some things to do to study for the test. I knew there was going to be a little bit of just based on the fact that we were doing this within a semester. IT was like, I don't know, an hour hour a half class each day once a week.

I knew that we would have a little bit of that, just learning the test part on some of the sections. But I went through everything in the class and I went to make sure there's lots of hands on. So I had them go out.

A, they had to do D X ing. They had to use my call sign. Uh, we, I had to try a bunch of different things, build the antenna as we went out to actually do.

I had to build the internal before we gone on the air and then put the intent in the tree in everything, uh, the day that I was doing at eight. You won't talk about a hard cell like, okay, so F T A is not exactly the most dynamic thing you're doing, right? And I was like, how am I going to do this and and .

then it's burg.

I I was gonna point out, like I planned that day to um h go outside, build like an interesting loop in tenner or something. I do something like that and hook up and make IT for twenty meter band and didn't do F T. A with IT.

And I remember IT like I just started just pouring down rain, just like IT was a horrible rain that day. There was no way we're going outside. So I had a little indoor loop and I said, IT up and I said, okay, here's what we're going alone with the radio today.

We're going to see what we can do with like a very modest set up. So take the little small indoor mag loop in tana, put IT in the window in this, basically in the big brick, building them like a school room. And I hook lip this little Q R P.

Transfer, and that I had one person, man, the like the actual computer. I had another person find on the global or on the map where our contacts were, and then I had another person at the board who was figuring out her White, how far IT had gone, like, how many miles per White IT had made. And in that being, like, super fun, they all really enjoyed IT.

And when I first went into that, I thought how i'm going to make S T A, you know, kind of interesting. And I did like one of the the most fascinating things at the end of IT. So I was like, super. It's like one of the proud moments of my life when my students, i've got their licenses right, and we had we actually had the we come out uh to where we met for our school just to make IT easy because there's a lot of people there. We actually had a few people come in from outside the school. Since in the other school you to test there that day and I was like, just super, super crazy proud of all these students because I did really well and one of the parents came up to me afterwards and this was like the fall term. So her daughter was going into the IT was like going into Christmas time and stuff and he came up to me afterwards and after the term IT ended and SHE said, I just want you to know that when you first proposed amateur radio, I know my daughter.

She's kind of like a fashion girl and like has zero interested in this stuff and um SHE started out the course and I I was supposed to doing your course because I thought this is not gonna enter IT her and anyway SHE performed she's not going to interested you know and he said by the end of IT you know what I got her for Christmas and our dino said and SHE wanted in our dwo head because he went to learn about IT and like SHE actually turned her whole career towards the engineering side of things after that and college and so like IT is I think I was lucky. I do think there's one really interesting thing i've learned about homeschool students is that there's kind of no there's like no like ceiling on what you can learn and what you should be learning because you don't have you know these grades. People are walking into where the people have done the same thing before them the year before them.

So like they're walking into their soft more year. Everybody did the same stuff in their self more year. You know you go into IT, there's just kind like wide ede and ready for whatever happens and it's pretty dynamic. And so IT worked out really well that way. Um so I think if you you ever wanted bill to get some people excited, go find a home school grief man and theyll rope you and especially if you tell him that it's a there's scholarships of.

I don't think you should just count see the competitiveness of this too. Yeah, teenagers are hyper competitive. We had a mixed adult and a teenager course that we offered through one of the clubs and IT was actually kind of scary during an anti build and testing session. Because I had we not tested the antennas, I don't think there would have been any interest on the part of the teenagers.

But when I came down to putting an analyzer on to the intended, that they had built themselves and then marking themselves against the adults, and IT was like watching some kid go into the end zone and Spike the ball, right? Like they are going, hey, edt power. Yeah, it's include table. How not vicious. But you know, they were definitely going, mine is Better than yours.

Well, when you, they can get vicious to. And when I was a kid, the the, the, the enemy that we look down upon and scorned when we revive them. The c beers, oh yeah.

Now I I know that there are many hams who used to be c beers, so I don't want to bring up bad memories, but that was the truth. That was the truth. When you were a kid, if somebody said they were A C beer, you just looked them like, please get away from everyone to see you could .

be seen with you yeah, the term was chicken banner. Ah, well, I think you're going to get a hand licence. Sorry.

judge, we're going take a quick break when we come back. Bill, I want to a dive into a little bit about what you're doing in the shack.

okay? And this is part of the southern check.

Exactly that. That one, in particular.

cool will, will be right back.

Access your station from across the room or across the world with flux radios, high performance H F S D R systems. The flex six thousand series is the top choice for remote station Operation. With its innovative architecture, you can control the radio using your windows or mac computer, iphone, ipad or flex radios.

S myo remote control head setting up remote Operation takes only a few minutes and requires no additional hardware. With an intuitive user interface, remote Operation could not be easier. For more information, go to flex radio outcome.

Every week I listen to the Q S O today podcast, where eric goods force at one ug is your guide to the most interesting stories in ham radio. Erick guess share their ham radio history, their contributions to science, electronics and technology and their secrets to amateur radio success. If you are looking for mentors to lead you to ham radio success, be sure.

And listen to my favorite hammer radio pod. Q S O today, A Q S O today, that calm or on any podcast player. Bill, you've had a lot of stuff going on in your life in the last couple years as you I guess you're technically retired. Is that correct?

I am really retired. I am i'm retired, retired and it's great. The hours are terrible, the both situations really good. So except .

that pay is .

perfect very much .

well is a good civil servant, I could imagine. So so you've had a lot going on with with your shack. So maybe give us an updating a about your new was IT into C Q R.

Southern shah H I seven stroke to C Q R. We're calling its. Smoke shack south and there's um there several reasons for IT. It's located on the eastern tip of the island of his mania a the very eastern tip of the divinity, an republic.

My wife is dominican and we have three reasons for going back and one of them, the most important is that a lisa is is an only child and her eighty five year old mother under eighty five year old mother's twin need help. And so we're going to go back. Well, we are back and we've got an apartment down there on the asian tip of the island is a nice environment and they can they can live there and h they're very happy there.

And it's so it's it's a good way to take care of allies, mom, which is very important. The second reason is that um at lisa always wanted a place of our own in our own country and so we we have that apartment there now which which allows her to to maintain contact with the domestic and republic the third reason is that even though you the canadians here might laugh at this now, but we we want to get away from what we consider the northern winters of northern Virginia. And when IT gets called an an uncomfortable and dark, we just jump on the plane and go down to the the the republic.

Now when we started plan the the apartment, there was no room for a shack in there. So I just kind of casually mentioned to my wife, I said maybe we could locate a little corner, some place where I could put some of the radio stuff. And Alice is a really good hearted about this and always very supportive.

And the next thing you know, the engineer had carved ed out a shack about the size of the one that i'm in here. Now it's about, I guess, how eleven feet by eleven feet, which is good, and it's up on the seventh floor, the apartment. I've spectacular ocean views.

It's a great place put up and that is actually the building is so high up that i'm kind of waiting for a lightning suppression system to be installed before I put an antenna up there. Because if not, the antenna would be by far the tall lighting around and would be like a lighting right right through the shack, which wouldn't be good. But it's it's nice.

It's nice when I get down there, i've shipped about now. Now this is this because you guys will get check out this. My shack is has grown and it's getting crowded because there's a lot of junkin here, a lot of old radios, a lot of new radios, lot of home brew radios.

And I said myself, this is an excelling opportunity. I'll take half of this junk and send IT down to the dominican republic. And then i'll divided into, and I did IT. And you know what the amazing thing is, even after I removed half the junk, this room looks exactly the same.

It's a strange thing, but I did and now I I have half the junk down the dominant republic, including one of two s thirty eight e receivers, which by the way, are two more than you actually need. But I have one of them in the media republic, in one here and all bunch other stuff. And it's great fun.

But IT is it's it's a way to go out, go down there and to on from down there. And I met a lot of contacts. I think I work thirty D X countries over the summer without even really trying. And the american republic with just wire antennas and low power.

So you have an access to the roof to put.

yeah, we put stuff up on the roof. Are you planning?

And like something big or or just like a war.

it's a problem because my instincts would be to put up, uh uh, a five or six band huck spin, which is what I have here. But it's it's hurricane country down there where we're away during the hurricane season and I just don't want this thing get knocked down and hanging off the side of the building with me not there to do. And I think about IT, you know, so IT really puts you think you begin think and all be great to put a help there.

I don't know. I might just go with wire die poles or rotary die pole, maybe a moxon that I could take down when i'm not there. But I I have to think about the antenna situation little bit and again, i'm waiting for the, uh, lighting suppression system to be installed before I put anything up.

There is a lightning rod. You know, one thing there might be some think about and maybe this is a bit of a hassle, but maybe not. So for a few day, our club bought a buddy hacks and they're not really intended to be left up full time. But i'm wondering if you could use something like that for you know, a month or whatever. I you know.

I was thinking that's a great idea, George and I thought about that. We our club here, the wireless society has them and I could could easily put IT up and and but he is funny because you'd have to get up on the roof, which is swell, feed up off the terrorist and you get to a certain age. You just don't want to fall off the latter anymore, right? So I I don't know i'm i'm in i'm interested in in easy access, easy to put up, easy to take down.

Well, that's why i'm thinking about the buddy hcs because um we figured out that well, ideally if you have a permanent amount, you could put IT up pretty easily with person. You you don't really need a cruise. people. The only time you need more people is if you get a mass, you're trying to guy IT you while, but if you have like just a like a ten foot pole or something and you could somehow just start a walk at or even just use their portable tripod and guy down, like put some guy points in position and leave him there, and then you just set the thing on the roof and up a goes. And good.

I think IT along those. That would be great fun. Yeah, good.

I I have an even simpler I and tanna idea. I've heard about this thing um i'm not quite sure how you say is IT patta na, but I understand IT to be very late and easy to deploy as as a wire well.

true, but built to build a zone. I mean.

well I I actually did because the antenna that I was using all the summer was actually a sixteen foot fibre glass telescoping fishing pole, right? And then I just, and I just kind of guilt ate the elements for a fifteen and twenty meter quarter, a wave onto IT, and I spread out some some radios on the bottom. And that became my antenna that I worked all kinds of dx with that. But but I kept I was earning for the the the heck beam experience that I have back here. So uh, it's quite something when you just can swing that hacks beam around to the north and all of sudden those stations in thailand that you could barely hear before are just sort of boom and out of the home brew receiver is going.

ah yeah so anti na sounds like still some things to sort out. And then is there a primary shack, rick? Or is that a variety of the Q R P rig?

It's a variety of home brew ricks I brought down. I have down there um uh a version of the ten and fifteen meter rig that I built here. I I need to build another now I have an amplifier here.

I have a here here guys, you can see IT because it's off the camera, but I call at the point one kw in here, point one kw because it's got two M R F four fifty four transistors. And this from a kid. I talk bad about kids, but when he comes to a hundred, what amplifier go with a kid? Because if you try to build yourself, it's gona turn into a massive one hundred one asso later.

I I speak from experience, so I went with the C C, I communications concepts and CoOperated amplifier kit and IT puts out, it'll take about one or two watts in, put out about one hundred watts, which is is all that I need, right? IT runs off a twelve vote supply. I'm fine. A hundred watts.

I I don't need to run to kill a what? Hundred watts is fine and so I have one here. And IT works great. I use IT all the time and i'm gonna once I finish this thing, which is almost done, which is the the myth poster twenty meter rig, i'm going to get get another kit from C, C, I, and build myself an amplifier, one hundred amplifier, that I could take down to the demonian republic and set IT up there. So have a one hundred one amplifier.

I'll have a twenty meter transfer, ten and fifteen meter transfer, and I have a whole bunch of little small Q R P rags for C W, but I don't really do c but D W much anymore. This is kind of a short point. But but I think many of us who cut our teeth on C W, you just sort of get tired of we don't use IT anymore. I'm definitely a microphone guy now. Sorry, sorry to the street up guys.

Let, let me wipe the tears. Sorry.

go. Time is go ahead. You can open in on the C.

W thing. Okay, okay. It's alright. It's right. I'll be a little a bit.

Just could be come, all right, sorry.

he's getting the vapors, I can tell. So so you know, temptation to go by like a fancy mancy eight thousand dollar japanese radio?

No, you know. And it's a strange thing because most, most people, they think if i'm home brew in the riggs, I should home brew the antennas and and i've done that. I i've home brewed a moxon and I just discovered i'm not very good at IT.

You know, the moxon set up there until one bad winter storm comes through Virginia. And then the maxon is like spread all over the backyard. And I I, I decided that I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to climb up on the roof a lot to make repairs on something that I didn't build right in the first place. You if you don't build right something right in the first place and it's in the shack, you just go over the work pension.

You saw her at some more and you come back and house work and right, if it's up on the roof and IT starts to drop on you and you gotta climb up on the roof, or you gotta get the gutters guide to go up to climb on the ropes, oria and IT IT becomes a real hassle. So I I decided to go with a commercial and tennis. I have A K four K I been up there and IT IT works fine. That was easier, simpler er, but there does seem to be a kind of it's kind of kind of you there's a commercial and ten up on the top and IT connected to a whole bunch of goofy look at home for weeks and the shack. So I kind of like.

at that way, your implementation of stations is exactly one hundred eight degrees opposite of mine. So in my life I ve got all these fancy sh mancy. Radio gear and a wire, literally a long wire e that goes out the window, not even on the roof.

Well, that yours is more typical IT IT is more sensible. At least hams can say, well, I I work on the the antennas is Better and I am exactly the opposite, rather work at the work bench then, then, then upon the roof.

So when you're thinking about setting at the station in the new location, is there a workbench space and a Operating space? How do you organize?

Yeah, yeah. Well, well, this again, I thank my wife for this, because not only did he Carry out the space, but SHE SHE hired a kind of carpenter to build on. On one side, facing the ocean, there's Operating table, and about six feet back is the as the work bench table.

And a very important element that we recognize, because of our experience here in the shack here, is shelving. So the two sidewalls, or all shells from floor to ceiling there, there maybe six shells in there. One thing I kind of fell down on and I can try to get them to install a lot of, uh, power outlets in the shack, but they just don't want to do that.

I think of each out will cost some a few box. So they they get changed and they give you like two outlets and there is kind of crap style. But but not that much. They did.

I did manage to get them to install outlets on the ceiling that would go that I could run cox cable right up to the roof and to come out not have to go out the window and around and some goofy thing like that. So that's there. And um well, it's so coming together, it's it's gonna. It's going be fine.

So when you think about set up the workbench, was there wonder to instruments or or tools or things? He said, okay, no matter what, I got to have the something.

I got to have a sel scope. I've got to have a scope, uh, a regal scope. I have a regal scope here, and I got a Better regal scope down.

There is a digital business scope um cost about two three hundred bucks but i've used that already is very important to have a an L C meter from overall digital electronics. The guy is gone, is passed away, but his his company is still put out a lot of these things and taught D, B seven bp over. Kindly sent me one that I i've now got in the dominican republic.

I got a rudimentary single generator scope. I've got a good sorter ing station. And yeah, I I could build things down there.

I brought a lot of the part that I had up here, and I sent him down there so I could I could build this, the radio that build here. I could build IT down there. So that's one of the things that I wanted.

And you know when you when you divide the shack between two locations at both locations, if you'll find yourself, think and dam, I wish I had brought that thing here. It's it's fifteen hundred miles away. Appear it's not a problem because you just go to amazon, click click click book going to ask .

you like what's what's amazon like in the dr. Well, are they not overnight?

It's not overnight, but it's pretty fast. Ah you you you can get the amazon package with them two, three days yeah so it's it's it's it's not bad and and it's okay. You have to use a uh a mAiling address in florida and then they Carry IT down. They send a Carrier down.

But most importantly, did you have two copies of solid state design for the radio? amateur?

I did, I did, and I do IT. One of them is in the dominican and republic, and one of them is here. And I D two copies of experimental message and are of design.

One of them is down there. One of them is here. I have a pretty decent library. I don't have all these books, but I have a pretty decent library down there and um and it's is usual a time for I also had to you know one thing is that we find in this goes against my my H D R. instagram.

You need a computer in one of these checks you know we're talking right now talking to a computer and we become very dependent on the computer for everything. But um you know I got one of these little a windows eleven machines, its size the size of the palm, your hand it's call A P C B or something like that. The time thing, the an amazon like I an i'm a ID.

And the thing is about this big, it's really tiny. It's about the size of maybe two packages of cigarettes. And it's a it's an amazing machine.

It's got windows eleven. It's got a lot RAM, it's got a lot of storage. It's not it's it's way beyond the ah the chrome book that I had before. So it's that's that's a welcome addition and I have a nice computer there on the shack. It's it's nice.

It's good if we ever asked you your brand alliance or allegiance when IT comes to sota y irons.

you know lately have been use and hacks hack the ah hakodate making some good, good. I have them here. Hay O I have sothern station and ho sotero station down there that somebody gave to me and that this one appear that I have, that I used quite a bit and I am, i'm pretty happy with them.

You know, sotero stations, you'll burn out pretty quick though. I've gone through a lot of them because you you use them for a while, and then things start to work in or generate a lot of heat, lot of current, and they fall apart of lot. But hao seems the hacks seem to hang together for a long time.

Yeah, IT tends to burn out faster if you leave them on seven. Hao.

here is really nice, because as soon you take the iron and you put IT in the holder, IT drops from seven fifty degrees from online to four hundred .

degrees from rehang. So model .

IT is a second.

Yeah, okay. So trusted.

Rod didn't ask him about what screw .

driver he pref.

You know, when he gets back.

you have asking .

about Roberts also.

So yeah.

no.

that F X nine fifty one.

F X nine fifty one. Okay, making note that the show note, because I have an F X trip. I I D, yeah.

And you know, it's a great thing, but when I put IT back in, IT stays at the same here. If I leave IT turned on for a few hours. I can get upset about IT.

So put IT in that holder drop down four hundred degrees. And then when you take IT at the holder, you have to sometimes you have to pause, but IT only takes like two or three seconds to go back up to seven fifty. So it's really fast, good.

But ninety one you said, right? I'm sure the show .

would not be complete without a need to buy something.

So i'm glad you guys brought this up like nine and fifty one.

Nine, fifty one. Okay, well, yeah, as church, as church said, when you head your headphones off ill, the show wouldn't be complete without a need to buy something. So i'll put a link .

on the show notes to the station here on amazon with that yeah that's that's a nice small eyes.

So i'm i'm sure rud has another question for you, though.

So this is a big set up, by the way, we're supposed i'm supposed to ask what your favorite school drivers are.

and I have all kinds junky w drivers around accumulation, the years. Yeah, that junky. Look at them. There's some jack junk y and drivers and aliment tools.

Don't word for .

the look at that soring non thing was finally hundred fifty degrees, friend right there.

So friends, this is arco funding program. Now out for.

remember.

send your donation, thirty nine Spark street, ottawa, ontario.

I need, but where the second I need two of everything want to do, be a the german .

products from the shopping show. Dean has dean.

Dean has. Dean has another place. He has a place here in in northin, Virginia, has a place out in the area, and, sure, maryland.

And he warned me before I got into the whole apartment building thing down in, the ideal republican said, be careful now. You're gonna need two of everything before you only needed one. Now you need to.

So bill, i'm really curious, did you do you have a complete like fifty years set of Q S S. Down there as well? Or did you split a lot based on even a month, even an odd month year? Like how did you do? IT just stop. I stop .

reading Q S T. A long time ago. I don't. I don't even, I don't. I don't even have any of them. Now, I, I, I don't.

And I guess if you want to find an article or something like that, you could just go online and you could find them, or some bootleg version of them or something. I don't know throughout there somewhere, but I I have electric radio of a whole bunch of electric radio magazines here. But I I don't really look at them the way I used to.

Gene shepard used to talk about how when he was a kid, you know, because when we were kids, this was long before the internet, long before, you know, even cable TV. So you, there was nothing. He talked about how he would devour every Q S T.

Magazine that came into his hans, he said he'd stay up later night, written the ads in the back of the Q, S. T. Magazines, you know, the ads for grammar, you know, he'd read of the detail study of the Prices of grammar, the size of grammar, what kind of grammar you might need. You know that that that was a different time.

You know the best thing that happened in our household has been Q S T on the ipad because now have with my wife while SHE reads something and he thinks i'm reading a book and just leaving through Q S T now.

And if you had a flex radio, you could be, sit in, they're in fifty eight and nobody's the wiser. But there you go, you go.

I know there you go. Well, I mean.

the other loaded question when we have built is what is your favorite screw head type?

Oh, well, you know I uh, um no flat headed screws, no fat has no then is that the was he called the something man? He got a video channel there. Then I forget, but decay, uh, three, uh, H K uh, a pole down there in melbourne has told me to watch this guy, the um inspired man or something like that but he he does a lot of workshop stuff and he he made this very violent video about no flat heads.

never. So I would say i'm with them, with them. Remember, it's not .

distinction on flat heads screws. It's whether it's a bettle flat head screw or a parallel flat heads screwed because cabinet makers, you know, you've got to have those parcel sides to the flat head screwed drive.

We're not doing any flat has crews, my friend phillips, we're going. Phillips.

sorry, bill.

i'm sorry .

about that.

So now we're we're about to have an international incident. I just want to point this out.

That's just wrong. And sorry, you're wrong. We'll send you a care package between myself and vents.

We'll send you a care package Roberts and screws. We'll go over the commit can really bit rover gay, i'm good. Or square drive that's we'd like to say in the U.

S. All good. So okay, I think that ends our tool, snowy portion program.

and enjoy. I thank you.

Well, we can always ask the lesson, which is, is there a favorite ite vote meter?

Good point.

Well, I have all kinds of junky vote meters here. This thing I picked up, this is a volt meter. This is the astro A R.

And it's, I like IT because it's got a thermometer and IT so you could check the temperature on stuff. But it's really one of these people, readers, you can get. And then for many years I used this thing.

This is an an old radio shack wall leader. This one has definitely seen Better days. This is probably the original one that I ve had for like twenty five years.

But at a handfast I found a new one in a box. Well, body, somebody bought IT that once down the dominican republic, this ones here, and even today, I was kind of lake, I was, I kind of had the wagon. Look, you to make sure IT wasn't zero zero volt.

What is actually thirty five? Okay, I I could have thought I was zero bad. So I could probably .

had that same one. That was my very first digital multimedia with that model right there. And I got IT.

Yeah, there you go.

There you go, my counter yeah .

the yeah, the yeah the brand that was easy to see and hard to say when you walked into radio shatters, bill, is a true what they say. That man that has one brand of multimedia. Ws, how many evolves? He has man with multiple brands, never quite sure.

quite sure that is actually one of .

different .

scopes, get all kinds of power supplies here. You know, these the signal generators that they have available right now from china are getting Better, but they're got terrible names. I mean, the field tech, single generator field tech, really bang good.

Bang good. Who could fixed? They need to hire some people who could sell them.

Look, bang good. Probably not a good brand name. Neither is fiel tech. No.

thank you. Not good. yeah.

So bill, if you had an unfortunate situation with your shock either here or in the dominican and you had to grab one thing on your way out the door, what .

would a question probably the ah the dual band transfer yeah but you know unfortunate incidents. One thing thing I really I do worry about here quite a bit is fire because vince mention leaving the saddle ing iron on. And i'm sure you guys all have the same experience. You leave the house, you drive down the road with the wife and suddenly you think a, uh, I left that they are and we're gonna come back at the the whole house is gonna a blaze with the flames beginning suspiciously at the have radio.

I think we have a whole episode on that one. Yes.

we actually do. Yes.

there's a guy, there's a guy, is an A M, is a personality, is talking about tim W A one. H L R. some. You guys may have heard tim thirty eight, eighty five A M. It's it's a controversial topic, but I got, I talked the timi a number of times.

One time he was telling me about the fire that he suffered in the house up in may, and he lost everything. Yet a whole bunch of radio equipment lost everything. He was disaster.

So IT really is kind of IT of, was kind of a sobering conversation. And afterwards, I got one of these little orange bombs that sits up on top of the shack. And the story is that if, if IT ever reaches three hundred degrees, very high, IT explode like, like, boom, and spreads throughout the room.

Fire, retarded dust. I do. I have no idea whether they would work, but it's reassuring when I see IT sitting up there and I think about me, leave in my side. So i'd rather come back and say, honey, everything in the checks covered with fire retarding us.

If there's a ship.

what happens?

Don't know what happens on. So here's a thought.

I when we move, we move from california to organ. And so when we moved, here is time to set everything up. And you and I finally have a um a room that's my my workbench room used to be the garage.

Now I have a room for that. So very civilized. And so when I go to set things up, i'm thinking, I know i'm going to leave something turned on and i'm just, you know, it's going to happen.

So I got one of these outlet strips that's like six feet long with a plugged every three inches, like a huge one. And I screwed IT to the bottom of the desk. And so I have two desks, like in an l, so there's two of those things in there.

In each one of those outlet strips plugs into a controllable outlet. So there's little opto ice leader in the outlet. You flip the switch and the outlet turns on and flip the switch and the outlet turns off.

And so I got a big tiger switch with a big grid. L, D, on the end of IT amounted IT in a box, and I bolted IT to the end of the work bench. So when I, when I walk in and I want to do something, I flip a big togo switch on each bench.

The big bird light goes on and the powers is on. When I leave and i'm i'm done, I just have to flip off those two switch. Everything is disconnected .

from the question. Have you ever forgotten to turn the switch off when you left?

No, actually because of the red LED that was that was the saving.

Yeah so i'm now it's a different .

story in the garage. So in the garage there's also workmen and i've got one of these big hacker sixty five blot pencil irons. I've walked into the into the garage on more than one occasion, one day to find out that it's still plugging .

in so heated .

and it's nice and hot. And he has been for at least today. So but there's no big red light on that one.

I mean, I I would have seen I get a fixed that one but i've definitely done this drive down. Its like men I left the big guttae iron plugged in. Old man, not good.

So during during right after the um by the hurricane came through. And h bill, I don't know if you heard a bit like when I came through, we were without power in our neighbors od for two and half weeks, and I was we were lucky here at our house because we have a solar power system with some battery. So we had battery back up.

We could use that. We had to use IT judiciously and water for IT to last two and a half weeks easily. But I decided, I I remembered when I was looking through my the our lex sort of storage building outside, uh, I was looking through there, and I found these little flash like kids that I used to make, and we used to distribute around the world through this organization is around called years for a world.

And I was, I I remember member, yeah.

And so as is, they were called you manali zis what we called them just to give them a name, but they were really just these little uh devices that would take a uh quote, dead double a battery and quote, um and so I like pump up the voltage so that you can use IT with this. L D IT was super efficient. Like typical dead batteries would make the thing last for four a weeks on the whole time, and IT was enough light to read by or whatever.

That's what we were using for our kids would build them in whatever country they could build these kids and learn how to make something. And actually, IT was useful and they could use dead batteries. Were found other streets while I was thinking, I looked not happen to find a stash of boards and I was able to find enough parts that I could make, uh, those humanity lights between me and my daughters.

We could make the humanize for everybody, oh, in our neighbors. Od, and this was like the one time I plugged in my iron and I walked outside. I was like, I like, almost broke out. The sweat is like, i've turned off the iron because i'm like, completely deplete our batteries or something because i'm leaving the heating to buy zon. You know.

And I want to add to that something that Thomas did that was really smart during this was a point. One of his daughters, as the powers are, he was. And I think what your real sweat was, Thomas is SHE believed you left at all. That's like because .

and he had summons SHE .

had absolute power too. So if I was like one of those situations that you didn't want to face, but you don't want to face silvy, if you had left something plugin or turned on, oh my goodness, especially since I tend to be the guy that was around the house on a Normal dams like, you know like I got things on you're not using this thing, you know I don't pay attention to lights but I pay attention to other things usually um and um yeah so I had to like kind of really think IT through a during that stage, not leave IT on in the house.

And I will say this other thing when you're talking about rob, when you are asking about what would you take from your house, you in case of a fire, I thought about that a little bit more because years ago on the S D B. Welling post, which is about short wave radio and receivers, and to I asked readers like what what radio would you grab if if you, if your house cold on fire? And often i'll ask these questions without thinking about IT myself.

I was curious what other people will do. And then I realized I Better answer IT myself. And to me, there was like, no question at all. It's my Scott marine S L R M, which is a circuit sixteen forty three, a radio that was used as a moral radio on navy ships and IT waves. Like, I swear, you IT waites eighty five pounds.

And because they had shielded to the point that a local oscillator won't leak out and then, you know, u boats or whatever, you know, wouldn't able to find the ship, right? IT wait so much. And I thought, this is probably a really stupid idea.

You not make IT to the door. Now, I know.

because I would, like, break my back on the way out, because the thing is so freak heavy to Carry. But oh, i'll do you love that radio? I'd probably probably be worth the H I don't know the physical therapy .

afterwards OK you can do a time burn.

What's that?

Are you sure what even burn?

IT may not. IT may not. It's a funny story about that thing so I bought IT from, uh, a local guy who lives that may be the our way and I had been looking for this story model and I just showed up on reg list one day and this I went to his house to buy IT IT belonged to his uncle.

His uncle was an A Y. man. And he bought this particular model, which was kind of made for the consumer market at the time.

I was exactly the same thing as what was in the ships as they didn't really change a lot. Uh, in in the forties, of course but he wanted the same radio he took at home. And IT had been fixed once two years after he purchased IT.

They sent back chicago to eh chicago. Whoever was working on them to have a fix is some little component. They need to be fixed um I need to go in to um to change like some caps or something. And I went to my body, charlie house because I he wanted to see IT plus he's kind of like my mentor for all things um um kind of valve and tube related and we flipped over and we opened IT up using those uh what are the names of the um uh it's like a flat head sort of a top on the screw is but the screws all become of spring up um as you're like turning up and their military there is something they use in the military world were two especially and they stayed put like they were captive.

Yes, but the to replace yeah is like a quarter .

term release and they would would say they were captive and you'd pull IT up. We pulled off the shield ding and inside that radio, which had not been open since nineteen forty seven, IT was pristine. I mean, IT was IT looks so insanely clean in there IT looked like a bRandy radio because IT was shielded so perfectly to keep like the local host latter from leaking out and um I love this thing but yeah, i'll probably break my back playing IT out of the house. I just hope we never have the fire .

to like I don't want any more natural. I tell you what.

I tell you what. I'll be looking with that thing.

guys. I to go the dog is all me. I'm here but but listen, this been great and will let you guys Carry on you so guys, you haven't talked about your benches or anything else something to list so when IT comes on the air but George of its okay and what to bow out at this point.

So it's it's been so great to have you thanks for coming on and love to have you back when you get a chance and give us .

an update and and look is great. Have big guys a lot, right?

Thank you.

okay. So I think it's time we do a little thing for what's on our work bridges. So Thomas, i'm going to start with you and I don't know it's getting and not too late for you, but still in is prime little late.

So maybe you start with you and. Give us A A quick up data. What's perhaps in in north CarOlina and what's on your bench if you have lunch?

Sure thing. yeah. So if I have a work bitch, I I do, I do have a work bitch. Uh, things here, like I ve said earlier or kind of Normalizing a bit, we're doing a lot of the um uh you know were catching up with things like contractors to fix things, uh, debris removal, working with female on a few things, insurance companies, all that good stuff.

We're also trying to help out the community in ways we can because now we're kind of working on the people that got hit really, really, really hard. And I tell you, like the more roads open up because we're able to clear IT out and we went on one today that we had not been on uh since the the the flooding uh down in the valley y and IT was it's it's very, very sobering. I mean, we're five weeks after this thing and we went through one part of a two lane road where there's like to be piled up on both sides of the road, like higher than your vehicle, like way higher than your vehicle.

And houses that were built, like we noticed when they were built maybe five years ago. And you know, the flood waters made IT up over the first story of the building, and some of the building site completely under. It's really so bring, but in our neighbor od, you know, roads holding up really well.

Uh, it's not as adventures that used to be. Thankfully, you can pass people on IT. Like I said last time, we've had pretty stable power IT actually went out last night for a little while for some reason.

And um our system, our solar system so efficient that we just see like a little flicker in the lights. It's not even enough that the computer goes out or anything like that turns off. But you just see a little flicker in the lights.

And um so they're still restoring things in the city of asia next door. And downings wants to know a proper in town. They still do not have potable water and they probably want maybe for a month to more.

Really, that's how badly all of the reserves were struck. It's just we so my unfortunately, just this last week, my father's law, I had to he had a procedure last week on his heart. He actually ended up having to go back to the hospital again because he had a couple of issues.

And and I noticed at the hospital that they actually have signs up on their uh, resting saying you can wash your hands with this water. You know it's it's okay because you can do that. The rest of ash will.

Well, they have these big tanker trucks all around the outside of the hospital feeding fresh water like potable water into the hospital to the tune of three hundred thousand gallons a day if they're doing that to make that work because the hospital was having a very difficult time by for writing without plutoria water, right um and that that's going to be in place for um and IT costs basically a dollar a gallon for the hospital. So you think about IT, like here in the restaurant room, you're flushing the toilet. You're like web. There's like a dollar and two twenty five cents or something or whatever. You know each time you flush the world, you just think about um how much is being done just to manage you know to keep things Normal and and workable um but here in the shack, so the thing i'm looking at now and I was doing the shit today as I was walking with my wife on the house.

I tend to when I walk, i'm looking up at trees, kind of a natural thing when you do a lot of field Operating, you like, oh, that be a great place to put in intention whatever well i'm doing at my own house now um and we're still i'm still kind of as the leaves are coming off the trees, we see more and more of the damage behind our house and I really desperately want to go ahead and put up another like Q T H antenna so because coh the storm took down everything, I had everything. There's not a single wire of anything. Even my inactivity is they're all down.

Um but i'm looking at the trees that remaining a so some really tall and I mean tall enough that I could do one of them probably all enough I could do like on an eighty meter vertical on IT. It's it's super tall but we may not happen to take their and so and then i'm thinking, well, if we take down that tree, it's gonna probably hit the other tree and I don't know and so it's i'm going to end up having to wait a while to put up a permanent in china. I think I may be a couple month year before i'll know I really don't want to take down any more trees.

But the way it's changed everything around here with so many trees being knocked down, all the sudden trees that weren't like solitary standing, you know, now they kind of are. And so we have to think about their wind profiles and everything as we don't want to fall the house. We only have a couple of trees that could even really hit the house and calls a lot of damage at this point.

So many of them have come down. But that's one of the things i'm working on right now is just kind of plotting out what i'm going to do. IT is a completely it's like moving to a different house.

I to figure what to put up. I used like the one, the one in tennis I really relied on a lot was a sky leap in tena that I put up, as I ever knew how long I was. I just made the wire work.

So what is this kind loop? I don't know that term .

so I maybe i'm even calling from thing, but is basically a horse on a delta loop oh kanna fed by latter line and um I have A I have a remote and tena tuna at the base of the anti na. So I run, collapse into the shacks, down to the remote to you and then later line up to the antanas a and it's made for a brilliant multi band antenna, low noise. Uh, wonderful, wonderful antenna.

The only issue with IT is of course, of the directional, but it's worked really well. And I like having IT is kind of like that. Usually I go to antenna also had a seventy meter die pole, had a forty meter delta p this vertical and some other intentions that put up over the years. But that will always relied on the light and um now i've really got a really think how I would put that back up because of course, that whole thing came down. But I was planning to I I was planning to uh, replace that this winner anyway but I didn't want to do IT this way.

Ever any thoughts that put up a tower?

More now than I did before because i've got a more cleared off area behind the house. Once we get rid of the fAllen trees behind the house, I will have space air to do IT. It's tempting.

I'm not A D X, or not a contested, so I may and that doing something that's more low profile than like a typical tower, maybe one that looks more like when this telescope polls or something like that. But I I may do that. I do think i'm going to put up a hacks pain now there enough trees away from that branches won't fall on IT some trying to find the bright .

side all this um that would .

be I think yes yes IT is that that um I have to say that uh I am going through up. I decided that I am going to downsize a lot of things here. I am going to sell off some radios and things not not a lot of H F Q R P radios.

So much of a few things that I have an access. I've got a lot of access um and I probably context in those monies and donated into the community here because always struggled sell stuff. I don't like I don't like selling things.

But if i'm selling IT to like give IT away, i'm fine with that. So I think that's what i'm going to do. And that sort of that sort of on the shack.

Now I am also thinking before the end of the year of upgrading some of my um uh computers on my max and things like that. It's about time to do that. So i'm kind of plotting that and I still have a morphy venture my head but boy, it's it's a little for the on the list right now.

Yeah I can imagine that gets pushed down the a few noches on the party scale. Yes, but I have noticed the amount of possible Operating is gone up a little bit considering um that's nice to see.

Yeah I did today actually a hither and I my wife and I we dropped off for our daughters. One daughter is now and this was kind of a uh you know A A sign that things are Normal alizon a bit.

We dropped off one daughter to do her volunteer work at a the history museum and black mountain um near us and the other daughter at her shakespeare rehearsal and and my wife I I we draggled off my the second doctor at the shakespeare rehearsal and we had two hours to kill them and I looked at I was like, uh, what do you thinking about doing right now? And he said, do you have something in mind and I said, is one of me we can go by a park over here, you know, I know when this open and SHE said, did you bring your radio equipment with you? And I was like, i've got the backpack in the back.

And I also had my head rest pouch right behind my head with a complete U. R. P.

Kit in IT. So yes is the answer. And so he was totally cool with me, go yell. I went to pison national forests and did IT was a fairly quick activation, I think, only work fifteen context.

There was a big pilot I had to leave behind, but we SHE had a couple other areas we need to run before we picked up our daughter. And that was just really nice. IT felt, IT really felt just like a very Normal day going and doing you a little park work.

But that must be little reassuring as things started Normalize little bit.

Yeah, one of not too many of our local parks here and around, like within a forty minute drive of my house, like still a lot of them are closed. But this one was a little further field, probably about an our hour in ten minutes away from the house. But IT was just, it's nice, it's reassuring.

And in fact, why was there there is actually clean up crew trying to work on that particular part in do some uh, a lot of clean up from where IT flooded. But um but yeah, things are Normalizing a little bit. That's nice.

That's good here. Rud, we haven't seen you for ages so and and .

it'll take me about forty minutes to go through what I been .

working on give the short .

yourself but no not at all um I mean first and foremost, Thomas man, you're in family discussions here all the time in this house and if one good things come out of IT for us, it's reopen the whole discussion of power walls and solar panels and all other good stuff. Um so what was potentially an ice before is now something that uh Lorry actually asked me about uh so that's kind of cool.

And for a while there I was being asked like almost daily what your situation was if i'd been in touch with you. So um good on you, man. I'm hearing you know things are coming not quite back to Normal but you're getting there.

So thank you. Good on you for that. But we were you very much our thoughts as on sure for the whole crew.

Ah that was the round here. Yes, i'm getting a bit reprivatised ast tonight and tomorrow from um the perpetual hockey machine. Um I don't even know why just a gap .

and schedule it's .

don't IT right. Um IT IT has been interesting though if I spent any energy on almost radio things it's been um we got at a vehicle now for my Youngest daughter she's about two and a bit hours away in what you might think of as rural ontario uh, with this hockey team and it's got me really thinking about kind of prepared this stuff for that vehicle for my vehicle and of course, then we can get there one way or another, especially as winter comes on.

So there's a piece of that. They are not you know not directly radio projects and kind machine to that um but hey, you know stops going on. Are you outfitting her?

Are you outfitting her car with a radio though? I really curious what you would choose for IT like analog d mr, you know what are you thinking?

Um we are in a negotiation right now for heard to finish your ticket um but even then, i'm looking at putting in something um in there, not really throw about putting a on there because just you know it's it's community that you can reach and it's like whatever or so i've got the basic going now I gotta figure out in ten amounts for and i've got the radio put aside for A H F, P H F. I won't put H F into that vehicle, at least not at this stage.

Um and I do have an ht in there right now, so she's she's completely left in an emergency SHE can use that which is good. But you know kids these days, it's all I to her credit, SHE has figured out how he might connect that phone to other methods if the cell system was to go down as you know, maybe internet, maybe whatever. Um I think she's come to the realization that, guess what, we had a whole community that's basically got no sell service and you may want to think about that. So yeah, IT was IT was very helpful for us to have that conversation that's yy you know .

with um and and it's only available, I think with I think like iphone fourteen s and later. But there is the satellite service and i've i've used that in real time, real the real thing and IT definitely works. It's pretty amazing. So that is really nice. Back up a communication system, at least for texting, you know when you're out of service.

And that could be used for non emergency purposes?

Yes, I can.

And and your situation also got me to restock the family vehicle first day cuts across the board um because again you never know when you're gonna the only one with a vehicle with a kp. Um so very proud of there. She's been SHE have been work on our qualification SHE has actually asked me about there's A M T course that SHE may take in the spring.

I might tag long because that sounds fun um but i'll see i'll see how that goes. So yeah I am visible progress on the radio of my friend um but um I think i'm going to be able to carve out a little more time during the week to do that. So you never know I may progress a report yet, but i'm so happy to be on here .

or so IT is so .

wonderful to see you again. Rod.

it's been too long. Well, you know, ham radio is playing the long arc because we all go through this. If you start using a ham when your a teenager and then you feel a teenager guy and only thing you discover girls and then there goes hammer y about forty years and then then you've going to, well, i'm radio, so we're playing the long game. Here you'll be back.

Thank you.

Vins stata, what's on the old bench?

Uh, not today, not a lot. Uh, just this week I finished, uh, putting the final trim and pieces onto my new to me uh f one fifty hybrid pick up truck um and just day's we're recording this. I have released a video on the build along with all of the products are used and and so there's a link to that video in the shower notes. Uh and so that's good at the one piece that i'm really proud that I figured out.

Um and and there is there is some uh georgian influence in IT uh as well with the the keep its simple uh silly design principles was A I needed to turn on a circuit when they well the church is good this but anyway, when the key is on um to charge my accelerate radio battery because I did not tap into the hybrid battery to do any of this stuff right I just drop a glasses mh battery on the floor on the back. But I wanted to turn on a circuit to charge the battery and at the same time turn on all of my accessory pieces in the truck, a front rear dash camp, a and A P R S beacon and a cellular booster and I wanted them to come on with the accessory line. So that's that's a huge in every vehicle that um will allow you to turn on as this is properly indexed ies.

And so what I landed up doing was from the battery in the ancient compartment, and my truck is advanced enough that he has B. M. S.

On the battery. So I couldn't tap the negative lead on the battery post because that would screw with the B. M.

S. I had to ground IT to the frame and then take hot off the battery. But that was interesting. So these newer vehicles, that's something you'll need to be aware of.

If you see a little widget on there with a two dimensional bar code or a small cuir code, it's that's A B M S. And you Better rethink about how you're tapping your power for radios. Anyway, I tapped that power and I ran IT all the way to the back, excused for ten emps. Uh, which you're thinking to yourself is not possibly enough to run a one hundred to radio and new be hundred percent correct.

All that line is doing is charging my battery, my solitary battery, and it's charging a battery on the accessory line because down the other side the vehicle, uh, iran, a single accessory trigger wire and of course, the grounding, the completion of the circuit is just but you know, vehicle chai ground. So all of this stuff done with powerful les for easy connectivity. Now the piece i'm super proud about is it's a really and it's an automotive rely.

That's what I had in my been to work with. And I just needed, you know a Normally open contact that would close upon enterprise, but being enterprised with the accessory line. So that was easy enough.

And IT passes the current from that, a line that runs, drag off the battery to charge, charge the a battery up the excEllent y battery and to power my accessories. The piece that i'm really proud of all, though, is I was thinking about putting a fault meter on IT. So I knew how many votes were coming to this thing, but I thought to myself this things buried under the the bench seat in the back kind of a storage compartment.

You look at the video, you'll see IT. But George always says, keep IT simple, silly. And all I did was I put a little red add on IT so I can look back there, and I can see if the read l ideas on.

No, the red L D is very simple. If the red light is on, i've got power to all the stuff that I need power going to. And the cost of doing this was, uh, oh, you know, maybe a quarter of an amp or off that accessory line to trip the relay.

That's all because all of the juice to run, all that stuff is coming off of a switched peace, going to the coming off of the the main battery in the in the vehicle rates. So um just thinking all of that through and and trying to overly simplify IT uh IT IT took me several, I have to admit to figure out oh yeah this will make IT so that IT doesn't drain the main main vehicle battery. So like I can start IT in the stuff when I need to.

So if you're parked in not running the engine and you put the vehicle in accessory on mode, then all the stuff fires up.

yes.

Okay, so, so. And when the car is off off, then this is all disconnected.

Except for the H F radio and the V H. F radio. Those ones are directly powered by the accelerating battery.

Oh yeah. But all the other stuff is.

yeah yeah nice. So even even on the front of the dash where I mounted, uh, my exceler Y G P S, uh, because, you know, the vehicle is built in navigation system. But home boy is not paying ten thousand is month to activate a GPS system in a vehicle that he paid a whole bunch.

Winning for like that just seems ridiculous. Um and to church, my cell phone that sits in a stand. Um I wanted that to come on and off and I wanted to easily done so it's on top of the dash and my friend facing dash cam. Um my vehicle has an auto dimmer mirror if lighting mere too bright i've never experiences together. Maybe I have and I don't know but it's got a source of power to IT that switched with the vehicle and I was able to purchase a little um a dongo that sits in between the connector and the mire and cyphers power off just enough to power dash camp you can find those on the amazon. So figuring all of those pieces out to minimize my power consumption um took a while you know the mechanical work of running lines and making sure they are all in war, mom and all the rest of that stuff took some time to bed anyway, IT was that that whole turning IT on with the accessory line and turn IT off with the accessories line piece that i'm really super humpy .

about so quick question. The I bumped into this um power distribution center accessory from garment that allows you to have you bumped into .

these things through.

Do we know anybody that's actually use those? Like because it's it's quite curious to me and i'm i'm thinking about when I redo the when I do the jeep properly, is is that something worthwhile because I was intriguing that you could from your phone or from a GPS all device you could turn this these accessories often on. You can bury the thing underneath hood yeah um but I I don't know if I know there are little Pricey, but I don't know if anybodies actually use them. They seem to have grown out of the A T V space .

atv in the marine space.

Okay.

right? That's where their aim ed dead. If people are spending a whole bunch of money on uh, a hole in the water, the hole in the water into ips, they throw their money, you know throwing a few hundred box more into switch power distribution. Not a consideration, just something they do. So that's market for IT.

I'd seen that is programmable and that you can, you know, when the vehicle turns on, IT turns on. When this turns off, IT spins around three times. And things the asia anim, yeah IT seems quite intriguing. I want to look into IT a little further. And if I learn more, I will a report back.

awesome. Well, George, what's on your .

work but not much much no, actually.

Well, then thanks for coming out to both. Ah our next .

so i've been working on this kind of big, big project now for a while and keep talking about IT because it's so like complicated that it's taking all my ham radio time and that's the station controller and so that just a kind of a brief e camp s.

So the station controller or the idea is to allow you to remotely controller or automate your station, which could either be i'm sitting at the desk, but I want to press a button to turn on and off things like switch, coax and power and that stuff. Or if you want to have a remote station, you want to be able to turn the power on and off, which ten is, check the temperature, whatever it's. You need something to do that.

It's very useful to have a single integrated system that does IT, as opposed to a bunch of fragmented bits and pieces. So the station patrol idea was born, and I have been doing a lot of harder design red, a lot of firm. Where the current state is, there are three main modules.

Module means a circuit board that are about five inches by five inches, roughly square. And um they are a rasberry pie host that has a power supply and a raspberry pie socket and mother stuff that serves up a web page running no red that then can control the actual interface modules. And the first interface modules, the general purpose I O module has lays IT, has volt meters as temperatures, sensors, digital, puts a bunch of common things to turn on and off of in measure of stuff.

And in the the second interface to the outside world is the cox really board, that for hf, it's a single pull four position switch implemented launching release. So you can have four intense to one radio or four radios to one in or take two of them and go for radios to four and ten is one of the time just the cross couple of the common. And you could do that too.

And then there's a fourth module that's not, by the way, all four, all three of those I have prototype. We're done. And for more running.

And so it's kind of in almost beta ready for those, meaning IT does what it's supposed to do. But I can still think of more features to add. Um so it's almost done for beta. And then the fourth module is an R F power montreal.

And this thing will let you take and off the shelf, rf directional coupler, which essentially is a box with two intending connectors that you put in your coax line, typically at the transmitter, and you can measure the forward power in the reflecting power. And so the R F one meter module will have two ports on IT. So you can have two separate directional couplers, let's say, one for an an H F radio and one for A V H F radio or you, whatever.

So that's that's designed, but it's not don't have the parts the board in hand as of yet. So that's still to be done. So hopeful ly, that'll be done the next month. Um my goal for all this is to have this stuff done in ba forum by the end of december and have shipped out beta systems to a few beta sites.

And so what i'm open for from the beast sites is that they're going to actually take this thing and plugging IT in and do something with that and give me some feedback. So the bar is pretty low, but I want people who really are going not just like put on the chaff ago. G maybe some year all try.

I mean, the whole point of doing a beta test is kind of final testing of the read one production version of this stuff for all that goes. Well, then i'll have those things for sure at the convention next year but probably before then probably like the in the q one early q two um next year um and then I have you know of course I can always think of some mouse to do so. There's another couple of different modules I have in mind, but i'm not going to over commit to stuff. But the things I just mentioned, the goal is to have all that stuff done in production mode, ready to go before he mention.

I have a question and that may be related to this module or not, depending on higher thinking, is what's the update on the wilderness protocol?

That's a good question. It's completely unrelated um but still a good question. So the wilderness protocol is using a sub dial tone, C, T, C, S, S.

Tones, to indicate the nature, the traffic on the channel. I have emergency traffic. I'm trying to make contacts.

What you know? What is IT? So I built the board to do that.

I actually deployed as a repeat controller, my repeater site. It's been up for a year. Vince was there. He could actually a test to the fact that it's on the air test. It's still working.

And believe or not, I have been been there in a year to touch IT and still on the air somehow. So um so that is in what i'd i'd consider kind of a beta state. And once i've got to that point, um I was distracted by a squirl.

so I snapped .

my next towards the station controller. Ultimately, they're kind of ultimate you going to be related. So the the the adventure ata controller kindly done, but then I want to get the station controller done.

Ultimately, they're going to be two separate things, but you can actually connect them together. Like let me give an example, let's say you want to put eventually radio controller on your repeat. So the eventually radio controller thing is done, and I need to do a few more modifications to make IT easy to integrate that into existing repeater.

Now you'll have the tone signalling thing. Now it's also useful to do with the station control where does to augment the functionality of your repeater because in any repeater site, um you never know what's going on on the repeater. You have no idea what the power output is.

You have no idea what reflected power from the intended is if you wake up in the morning and you go to key up your repeater or nothing happens, you don't know what's wrong. Did the power supply views below? Is the pa blown? If someone disconnect the antenna, you get no idea.

So with the station controller, you can instrument the entire repeater system and you can interrogate IT and say, like, what's the state of each of these pieces? Do I they see at the site? Do I have power coming out of power supply? What's the battery voltage? What's the solar panel voltage? How much our of powers coming out? Is the transmitter being? Keep up or not all that stuff can be measured. So you can actually use all these things to augmentation repeated in very different ways. So they're kind of related in a sense.

I'll tell you why I ask because i've been debating as as I can see down the road where I may be able to come back into the hobby. Um one of the projects i've been considering has been a repeated at the cotch site and I was even thinking of dragon Thomas along given recent events on an adventure to put up a couple of Peters. It's there's complimentary ideas there. There's community aspects to that. I I got to admit, Thomas, when you were going through your whole thing, I was mapping the description I used to tell family about this was, imagine we're at the cottage and this road washes out yeah .

and and .

not directly mapped for them and they went, oh yeah what what would we do oh well this and so I mean, we have the advantage of having a lake there, which just thinks that relatively easy to move around if you've got access to a boat um but still that um and besides, that would be a lot of fun and quite feasible dalian with the local networks in the community. So yeah this is why i'm sort of monitoring this room of far so yes, get IT way for two years but all the son are asking you tough questions about .

but you're think along the right the right paths so actually have a competent repeater controllers too. So there is a third piece that I wasn't really going to talk about yet. But now that you've been brought IT up road, how do I brought IT up? So there's another project in the hopper, which is a new generation repeated controller and so listeners may not know because if you don't build repeals, why would you even bother no but um myself in another ham, john kj sixty.

We've been building repeated controllers for almost twenty years and our focus has always been on large, multi ported big switch kind of repeater controllers where Prices no object, but you need a lot of functionality. So you want to be able to have multiple repeated and multiple links and all this kind of stuff, and there's just not a lot of good systems out there like that. And so we and we belong to a big club, the cat test radio club.

And can this enter time? And you need these big controllers for these big net ks. And so we basically built IT for our own internal use. And and so we create a company called sea radio, and that goes back twenty years ago, and the station controller is all going to be under that same banner.

And and so on the repeater controller front, we actually have two projects going on, believe IT or not, sadly, we can do this at the same time. They can have to be in in sequence. One project that john's mostly focused on is a next generation big repeater controller.

And I have to talk about this really at all because we're very early in the development process and it's probably going to be two years before IT sees the later days. There's no reason that over yeah get up um because if if IT never comes to light then you know what's the point. But that is a very modern digital repeated control system where you'll have most likely it'll be aboard with four ports on IT, four different radio links international whatever, four ports um but you'll be able to stack multiple boards to go up to sixteen ports, maybe more.

And all the interfacing between everything is all digital and all the all the Normal baseball processing is digital. So you basically take the o in to an c IT goes into a digital processing stream that you then act on, and then you reh encoded, or take IT from digital back to analog with the deck and then the transmitter. And then all the mixing is digital, all the filtering of the tony coding, all that jazz is digital.

That's the right way to do IT these days. And that's that's relatively simple hardware and massive amount of embeds software are. So that's what's can take forever.

And right now, we've prototyped in audio channel to do the baseball processing to see if what kind of processor is necessary to do all of that efficiently. And so we're getting our arms around that pretty and IT looks promising, but that's a far cry from its working as a system. So that's probably maybe a demo next year and probably not a product for two years now.

The other thing in this vain in the meantime is I do get a lot and we have a made of repeated controller, even fabricated them for a while because um parts are hard to get now they're easy to get, but the repeated controller business is very lumpy. You it's not an impulse by by any stretch. So so what what i'm probably going to do is take the venture.

The adventure radio controller has all of the stuff in IT to be a single port repeater controller as evidence by the fact that we deploy one as that. So it's got a microcontroller to do all the logic. It's got the audio and out in mixing capability.

It's got A D T, F decoder. It's got a pd coder built in in most repeated controllers. Don't build that in, but that central to the whole venture radio, I think. So all that jazz is built into the into the current board anyway. So what I was going to do is take the adventure radio controller thing that's been prototyped and running converted into a surface mount design.

And where am at is figure out, do I want to do a single port per board, or do I want do one bigger board with multiple ports and basically make kind of A I was the old fashion, in light of the digital controller that's coming in two years. This would really be kind of a traditional analog controller where to do D T M F decoder. There's A D T M F decoder ship, you know.

So everything is done in analog based band. Um the only reason why we're even thinking about doing that is because the the software will not terribly complicated. I mean, not it's there's a fair bit to IT, but it's not crazy complicated because half the problem is being solved in hardware.

So we talked with bill about harder defined radios and softer defined radios. And there here's an example where the big controller is going to be a software of flying controller in firm where not like a linux computer. The this baby controller is a hardwork define controller, which means that uses real hardware parts to do real hardware functions like you you want a uh P, L filter or you build one out of opens and capacitors. And you know so it's it's easier to do to get something done that way that IT is to do IT on software. But part of the problems, part of something for advocate and go ahead is .

going to say there's access to the device too. okay. So if you were in a rural repeater location, you don't want to be flashing that all the time because you may not have crest.

Well, we don't want you don't want to be flashing anything. I mean, so one of the tendance of building a repeater controller from our of view is the thing is going to be an instance. It's an industrial controller.

It's to work. It's got to work all the time. IT has there can be like a lot of people who are new to this this years of and we will say, why do you need all that hardware?

One, just take a rasberry pie and make that european to controller. I could write the logic in python in an afternoon. What's the big deal? Well, I mean, there's there's a lot of responses to that, at least of which is is a embedded linux application is subject to a lot of vagaries of linux, which is more reliable than other Operating systems in many ways. But to make IT bulletproof takes a bunch of effort.

So in people argue with me about this, it's like they'll say, well, my links is router, uses ebit linux and that thing is always on and it's hundred percent reliable. My answer to that, by the way, is is like, okay, let's say IT is but IT wasn't two guys that wrote the code. okay? There is a building full of people that designed IT and another building full of people that create IT that would spend their whole life working on this one product.

So yes, it's possible to hard linux to make IT really industrial strength like, but it's not easy and cheap. So so that's why we do all of the critical. Repeater controller design is all in microcontroller low level code because we want to know.

But every bit inside that thing is doing. And and that served us really well. I mean, we've been making these earlier versions for twenty years and there are super reliable. And and that's when a reason that in john, a genius. So let's just give that on the table. A lot of the credit goes to my partner and that project because he really is brilliant and knows how to write really good code and and and and he knows every line like the back of his hand. So that's not a trivial task anyway.

So just to complete the thin rod, if I made the the goal at the end of the day, probably next year some time, is to have the the sort of lower in baby analog repute controller, where we want something kind of bare bones, relatively inexpensive, done the old fashion way, just get IT out the door with a separate thing. Oh, by the way, the eventually radio controller will be built into that repeater controller. There will be a separate ad on adventure radio controller, which is essentially the pl scanning pal decoder in some interface stuff to retrofit other repeaters.

And they'll be the station controller, which is all about physical monitoring and control. And you can use these individually or you can combine them together. So when I looked at this whole thing, it's hard to pitch this big idea because it's like, holy cow, you're boiling the ocean.

But the big idea is, is I want, let's say, eat. Whether it's my remote hf station or a remote repeater site, I want to be able to envelop the radios in enough control and monitoring stuff that I know exactly what's going on. And I can I can control IT in a variety of different ways. So anyway, all of this stuff will will work together or individually when it's all said and done.

I mean, never call yourself a market, but i'm thinking about Walkers use case. I'm thinking about my use case and going like at least the low end version. That sounds really, really interesting. So yeah, call and I and I will drag Thomas along.

Yes, be fun.

By the way, our goal for for the big fancy digital version of this for that to be cost competitive for the functionality that you get. So it's not necessarily gonna much more expensive then the analog one. In fact, that might be cheaper at the end of the day because the actual bomb costs, the harvard cost will be less then the animal controller because the animal controller is a lot more parts in IT.

Um the digital version the only so you might say why in the world you're even bothering with the analog in one SHE is double down in the digital one. And that's a reasonable question. The answer really is that there's a lot of things that have have to happen sequentially, and it's just gonna.

You know it's going to take six months to to finally freeze all the performance of the base signal processing chain, then it's going to take another six months to make a system board with multiple channels, getting them all to work together. Then is going to take another six months to get the overall system software. We're to we're going to integrate IT with a raspy pie also, by the way, which will be a little bit than the analog one.

So you don't need the aspect pie. The rasberry pie is just therefore tasks that the microcontroller doesn't like to do. So the reserve pie is is a much Better network in your face.

It's a much Better schedule for events than a microcontroller is. So plus you can extend IT and write your own scripts, but not anyway. So there is .

all and put gender to vi on IT.

right? No.

yes, okay.

Although I shall .

have just asked ChatGPT to like design me a controller and see what I got.

Listen.

by the way, he might have been helga and wearing black leather .

just sang by by the way, in listening to the last a solar smoke episode they were making reference to um analyst A I on one of their broadcast and I realized that if we ever did that with our little group IT could either be hilarious or really scary um yeah .

probably Peter .

probably probably well, so that's .

what's on the benches. Sorry for the long dissertation but hey.

you ask that was good, awesome.

Thank you. Okay, anything else before we wrap up here?

So yeah already well.

rod, it's it's so wonderful to see you and have you on the show and obviously have been a dad takes priority over all this radio stuff. But but it's great to have you back on and I you can good .

to be back on. I'm gonna see what I can do to throw up from time to time.

Thank you. thank. Thank you. Thank you for making the time to to make this work today. I know that you IT was a squeaker getting in here through the border and everything else you had to do today. So thanks for doing that.

They probably would have been less of a squeaker if I had not called the board.

Yeah.

friends in high places.

Well, thanks everybody for listening. We hope you enjoy the show. He was a real treat to have bill on and we would love to get bill on.

And also we've talked to pete about getting pitch elly on. Join us at some point. He's happy to do IT. We just need to get that scheduled and look for you to told that.

And you know, our listeners are probably wondering how we're going to help light their wallets this season. That is our next episode.

That's a great point here. And and by the way, just today, paul Brown sent me the new bumper intro to that show. It'll specific to that show. So well.

nice look to that. Anyway.

that's IT for today. So thanks again to bill for joining us. Look for to having you back on bill and from all of us at the hundred to workbench.

seventy three, seven, seven. And many would say you get hits.