Re: My Introductory Post
- From: "Anthony Fremont" <spam-not@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:12:48 -0500
gbowne1 wrote:
Hello all..
I'm a newbie.. well sort of.. Now, don't flame me! LoL. I don't
know a lot about electronics. A lot of stuff I have forgotten over
the years about it. It seems I need to fill in the gaps in my
information, as well as learn new things. Well, I'm almost 30 and
it's been more than 10 years since I was in school. I live in the NW
where a lot of very technical people live because we have a major
internet and software company here, and a lot more.
I'm in to Shortwave (SW) listening and DX. I'm also in to
Mediumwave (MW commonly called AM) DX. I am also going to be getting
into Amateur (Ham) Radio. Posts to a Amateur Radio forum online were
unsuccessful, so I came here to Sci.Elec.Basics. They flamed me for
being inexperienced, and not to come to them till I had a radio
liscence, well at least thats how they came across to me.
I read the thread in rec.radio.amateur.homebrew and I don't think they
really "flamed" you. They sorta flamed each other, but that's the nature of
USENET. You can't have thin skin around here. ;-) They were just
cautioning you to not set your initial goals too high, or you might be
disappointed. Start with simple things and move up as your skills increase.
I know what certain electronics components look like, resistors,
capacitors, chips, diodes, and the basic stuff, but knowing what they
do and how they function in a circuit kind of elude me, or I have
forgotten what I was taught by my dad, science teachers and
I'm sort of autistic (a neuropsych is underway at present), and have
a hard time with short term memory recall, which makes studies hard on
me. Hopefully I will learn more about what exactly I have as far as
condition goes will help me narrow down what techniques are best for
learning such advanced stuff.
I have the 1985 (Yes, I know it's old! 22 in fact) ARRL Handbook
which has a lot of information, but it's over my head. I fear I'd
need someone to lead me through what I should learn and what to skip.
I figured not a lot of the theory behind this has changed a lot.
I have a 1976 Handbook and it's still quite valid. It has allot of
information about tubes that I don't really need, and nothing about
computers, but the radio/antenna theory is still good. My "new" one is from
1989.
Naturally I like putting things together. Well, About 8 months ago
I purchased a Fluke 8050A Digital Multimeter (DMM) at a thrift store
for about $10. Neat little one. I downloaded the manual from Fluke,
and well, still not have found that I understand how to use it. My
grandfather had a VTVM, an old Simpson from the 40's. Interesting
too. I got to use it to check AA and the like batteries. Beyond that
knowledge here is limited.
Perhaps you should get some parts and a bread board. Maybe a 555 timer, an
LED and some resistors and caps to make it work. You can learn allot from
something this simple. By setting the time period long (seconds or even
minutes), you can watch the cap charge and discharge with your meter. You
could use this to see Ohms law in action by plotting the voltage on the cap
over time.
You could then pick up a couple of logic ic's (say a binary counter and a
BCD to 7 segment decoder) and an LED display and construct a counter
circuit. You could then add more parts to expand upon that.
I know this probably doesn't sound as exciting as building a radio, but this
is how you get there. I think you will find it quite enjoyable making
something like that work.
I figured I would eventually build something out of the handbook,
useful in my hobby, and also maybe some sort of test equipment for the
bench. I don't want to do anything too complicated for a beginner yet
something that would allow me to learn more along the way.
That's a good idea. Small projects that work are way more satisfying than
complicated ones that don't. Plus it's easier getting the smaller ones to
work, when they don't initially. Now that is satisfying. :-)
I like the idea of homebrew.. not really kit building.. but rolling
your own kind of thing. Always has fascinated me.
Yes, I can certainly appreciate that.
Years ago, and I still do, because I managed to find a newer one
used, I had a kind of Science Fair kit which allowed you to build
electronics projects by inserting wires into springs on the top of the
panel. I learned some things then.. somewhere around 1986.. but
didn't manage to get a lot of the circuits I built in the book that
came with it to work.
These are not a bad way to get started. Most of the circuits should have
worked, perhaps you had one bad transistor or something.
Well anyhow there ya have it, yet I'm lost as where to go on to
next. I'm just tired of being flamed by a newbie.
Like I said, you need some thick skin to hang around USENET. :-) Perhaps
try to find another "science fair" type setup.
Oh yeah, I've found recent interest in Software Defined Radio, a
open-source project. Very neat.. Would love to try one some day..
maybe even build one.
Theres a link to something called HPSDR floating around. Google and
look at it sometime, it's interesting. It's High Performance SDR.
Greg
.
- References:
- My Introductory Post
- From: gbowne1
- My Introductory Post
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