Left Coast Political Scene

  16 Slide Rules in a Glass Case The Slide Rule is as old as dirt dating back to 1622 and invented by an English Clergyman and Mathematician named William  Oughtred. Any EE student of 1960's vintage, worth his salt, carried a K&E (In a Green Case) strapped to his belt... always at the ready. In the 1970's we saw the advent of the battery powered electronic calculator whose magic depended on those batteries not giving out at a critical time. The early Apollo astronauts carried slide rules. Three place accuracy on the slide rule could be achieved depending on how good you could squint... no batteries required. Many military weapons pre 1970 were designed using a slide rule.  So, it is with our wonderful hobby where using simple tools it is possible build highly capable equipment without having Claude (Some AI Avatar) lurking over your shoulder. Prior to 2021 AI was just a bulge in some guy's undershorts but today it will put you out of your job.  My sojourn with Pr...

Always the elephant in the room and even more so with Project X... repair parts. When I lived in Huntington Beach during the 1970's, a town nearby was Costa Mesa. In early 1940 it was home to many Japanese Truck Farms.   The order to intern the Japanese Americans literally wiped out all that piece of the truck farming. Many owned the land, and it was simply confiscated. The Costa Mesa Japanese Americans ended up in the Poston, Arizona internment camps (3 of them). The history of the camps is an interesting read and documented in a You Tube Video Post war Costa Mesa diversified into the electronics businesses supporting aerospace and defense and that gave rise to the potential of electronic surplus. One such store is Marvac Electronics who have a store front and sell on eBay inclusive of new and surplus parts. Believe it or not I actually found some of the obsolete semiconductors used in Project X at Marvac (about 90 miles from my QTH). Oldie NPN (Yes, NPN) Germanium Transistor I m...

With the 4th of July behind us, I should share as a kid that I also found the 4th to be a somewhat sad milestone. Summer vacation from the rigors of attending school was headed on the downward side. In no time it would be time to shop for flannel shirts, heavy socks and winter coats. Gone would be fresh corn on the cob and watermelon. It also meant soon no enjoying sitting on the back porch and watching the fireflies. We are headed on the path to winter. The longest day of the year (for sunlight) has passed too! Project X Home Power Supply I managed to acquire the schematic for the Project X home power supply and some information in that design is noteworthy.  A Tribal Knowledge Trick is to use a center tapped secondary winding on the power transformer where the that winding feeds a bridge rectifier and the center tap provides about 1/2 the voltage. In our case if the secondary was 500 volts (250 Volts either side of CT) then the bridge output would be 700 VDC +. Here two VR tubes ...

The project cluttering my workbench (Project X) has many challenges ranging from actually getting it to work to how do you power the beast. Tempo One FP-200 Weird and Strange are two really good words. As advertised Project X can be powered from a home (AC) supply or mobile from the DC Supply. In either case the HV is 750VDC, the LV is 210VDC, the Bias is -60VDC, the Filaments are 3.2 Volts at 3.2 Amps and 12VDC at 1.5 Amps.  So, at the N6QW Radio Ranch, I have a Heathkit HP-23, Drake AC-4, Drake DC 3, Collins 516F2, Collins PM2, National NCXA and a Tempo One FP-200. While all of these supplies cover some of the requirements of Project X, none is a drop in. In looking at the herd, one supply is left over from a project called Resurrection Radio where I took a Tempo One (worse shape than Project X) and brought it back to life. I bought a FP-200 to power that radio and when I sold The Tempo One, I kept the FP-200 JIC that someday it is needed. Well, some day is here.  Resurrecti...

A Trip Back in Time. My middle son, Tim and his lovely Amy visited yesterday as we celebrated the 4th of July. Several visits ago, Tim mentioned some items that were of his childhood that might be lurking in about 10 boxes of stuff that were in the move some 12 years ago. These were stored in my garage and yet to be opened some 12 years later. At the time of the prior visit, we set July 4th as the date to open the time capsule. We didn't find the stuff he had on his list but did find a whole box of family photos that were not collected with other photos I have.  Concurrently, with the passing of the XYL, there are some legal matters I had to revisit and just last week in a meeting with our lawyer, she asked a rather strange question seeing as we had been married for 57 years. She asked me was it a Happy Marriage. My quick answer was no one sticks around for 57 years if they are unhappy.  But in looking at those photos which actually spanned some 40 years my answer is more than...

Rear View: A Naked Project X! About a year ago on December 7th, I happened to mention to a 20 something hottie cashier at the local Albertson's that it was Pearl Harbor Day. She asked --- what is that? If we asked that same age group what is the 4th of July, you might get an answer: "The day Tik Tok went live". To put you in a festive mood and test your Americanithcity (ethnic American) here are a few sample questions from the US Citizenship test. 1. Ben Franklin had a day job and the 1st to hold this position and what was it? [No don't ask who was Ben Franklin? He was quite the ladies' man and was known to romance older women and his reasoning was: They don't swell, they don't yell, they don't tell and best of all they are as grateful as Hell!] 2. In what year was the US Constitution ratified? 3. The 1st 1o Amendments to the US Constitution are known as ... 4. What pivotal role did Thomas Jefferson play in the formulation of the US Constitution. 5. Wh...